Cities battle carriers

摘要

Has broadband Internet access become as necessary to individuals as water and electricity? The answer to that question has been at the heart of a long and often-rancorous dispute between municipal governments and telecom service providers. Tempers are now cooling, as the two sides recently coalesced around a common municipal broadband service model. The firestorm began in the summer of 2004, when some cities made moves to deploy municipal Wi-Fi networks to compensate for the carriers' failure to roll out broadband Internet access - cable modem and DSL services - on a full scale. As carriers concentrated their broadband initiatives on markets in which they would likely see a quick ROI, they left many pockets in inner cities and rural areas with only dial-up Internet access.Many cities felt obliged to dose the digital divide between the rich and the poor.