Last updated: February 21, 2008 - 1:12am
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Gregory L. Rosston, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research]
[Commentary] Google and Earthlink's proposal to provide free Internet access in San Francisco is great for consumers -- but not for competition. While Google has been a great company and helped millions of people use the Internet more efficiently, why does it have to be the only one able to use city facilities? Furthermore, why does Google need to go through the city to do this? Instead of picking a single provider, San Francisco and all other cities contemplating a similar process should make their infrastructure available to multiple firms who might provide different types of Internet access -- some free, others paid, some super-high-quality and others suitable for e-mail and Web surfing at slower speeds. Multiple firms can use and pay for use of a city's infrastructure, and consumers could benefit from the city making these services available at cost. All of these firms would then compete with one another as well as licensed wireless services and wire-based solutions to get customers. This way, consumers would pick the service they want rather than having it dictated by city hall. And the companies would be at risk rather than the city. Finally, and perhaps most important, in the future the companies would be forced by the market to upgrade and change their services as consumer preferences change rather than having to go through a bureaucratic City Hall process to change the system in a way that might not meet citizen desires. Innovation will be the key to future services, and cities are unlikely to be the best judge of what innovative services should be offered. Kudos to the mayor, the city and Google for showing that Internet access can be cheap. The entire South Bay should adopt this pro-competition, pro-consumer attitude in working with Joint Venture Silicon Valley on their proposal for wireless access instead of picking a single firm to ``win'' the project. Cities need to get out of the way and simply facilitate the potential competition for Internet access so we can all say ``Yahoo'' to the new services from Google and its competitors.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/14081100.htm