Los Angeles County, with a median household income of $91,000, is looking to have taxpayers build a broadband network. That proposal has received pushback from local groups who contend that Los Angeles County should use existing infrastructure and leverage federal, state and local tax dollars already allocated to broadband to connect all residents.
Los Angeles County published a report last year offering three different approaches to helping bridge the digital divide (although BroadbandNow reports that divide is very small in the area, with just 1 percent of residents lacking access). The first approach would leverage existing infrastructure and incoming broadband tax funds to connect all residents. The other two options would task Los Angeles County with creating its own networks. One approach involves a wireless network at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion and the other would extend county-owned fiber to every home in the county at a cost of untold billions of dollars.
Los Angeles County opted to establish a pilot project for the wireless network and study the option for fiber. Neither has seen much movement. While the county has initiated requests for proposals for the wireless pilot project, it hasn’t announced a construction partner; and there has been no movement on the fiber study.
Plenty of local groups, as well as private providers, have urged county leaders to focus on the first option. A band of groups that include the Boys & Girls Clubs, Korean American Coalition and Latino Equality Alliance sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that asked the board to “choose a solution that prioritizes the allocation of funding towards immediately connecting our most vulnerable communities.” The groups said the county should facilitate subsidized access to existing infrastructure with fast and reliable speeds rather than try to build its own duplicative network.
Those groups, in fact, made the same arguments that the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has repeatedly made on itswebsite Broadband Boondoggles and 2020 report “GON with the Wind: The Failed Promise of Government-Owned Networks”that municipal broadband almost always proves to be a wasteful exercise by local bureaucrats.
“The track record on public broadband projects is littered with failures and wasted resources,” the groups wrote in their letter to the board of supervisors. “Cities across the country have failed to make their public programs work because building, operating, maintaining and servicing a broadband system is incredibly costly even for private companies. We cannot afford to waste a decade on a failed enterprise.”
The groups also point out that adoption is a bigger issue than access, especially in a large city like Los Angeles with plenty of internet options. “Many residents choose not to adopt internet services for complex reasons, including concerns that the government will attain access to private information,” the letter states.
