A community panel organized by Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society and the Broadband Institute of California urged greater public participation in planning broadband networks that are being commissioned by local governments around the country. The panel also asserted that equal access to municipal broadband can only be achieved by providing underserved groups — seniors, low-income, rural residents, the disabled, and non-English speakers — a free or discounted tier of service with the same speed, privacy, and security available to households that pay full price.
The panel’s recommendations come as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and other cities wrestle with how to build and price their own high-speed Internet networks to make broadband more accessible to residents.
The panel’s recommendations came from a unique process of public consultation known as a consensus conference, which has been used worldwide to help the public make better-informed judgments about technology policy issues than those that are often expressed in public hearings and polls. The twelve members of the panel, including representatives from groups with the lowest rates of broadband access in the country, studied background papers, convened a public hearing where the panelists questioned experts from government, industry, and community groups, and deliberated like a jury before arriving at their recommendations by consensus.
"We often hear that the public doesn’t know or care enough about technical issues to make good decisions about them," said Al Hammond, Santa Clara University School of Law professor, conference co-organizer and Director of the Broadband Institute of California. "These residents not only learned about the issues, they introduced new ones that we ‘experts’ haven’t considered," Hammond said.
"The panel was enthusiastic about cities commissioning municipal networks, preferably from private companies that have the expertise to build and operate the networks," said Chad Raphael, conference co-organizer and associate professor of communication at SCU. "But the community members felt strongly that the public needs to have more say about shaping access to the networks that we will all rely on one day for our phone, TV, and Internet service."
The project was supported by a wide group of stakeholders on the municipal broadband issue. An advisory panel with representatives from the telephone industry, Silicon Valley technology companies, and community organizations oversaw plans for the project. The panel’s public hearing drew presenters from AT&T the major partners responsible for building Silicon Valley’s wireless network, including Wireless Silicon Valley (a project of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network), Cisco Systems, and SeaKay; and advocates for technology access, including the California Community Technology Policy Group and Great Valley Center. The conference was funded by the Community Technology Foundation of California and the California Consumer Protection Foundation.
The panel’s full report, available at http://www.broadbandforall.org/ or http://www.scu.edu/sts/ included specific recommendations for how to provide security and privacy, offer equipment and training to get the underserved online, and reach the disabled, rural residents, and non-English speakers in particular.
