This story is just in from Business Week about early adoption of new internet protocol IPv6 in Harrisonburg, VA. That’s great because I’m in Bridgewater / Harrisonburg every other year for our big Glick Family reunion and it’ll be fun to follow the story and maybe check out the service next year when I’m in the lovely Shenandoah Valley.
Joe Duck
Have Blog. Will Travel. Vaccinate!
Joe Duck 
Adoption of technology is always a two-edged sword but its clear that Ireland’s early and extensive adoption of fiber optics contributed greatly to their ‘green revolution’. Its also true that a good many communities particularly in vacation destination areas benefit from technology as tourists extend their stay once there is readily available high speed internet service available.
In many areas, such as Phoenix or Las Vegas, geographical boundaries of political entities such as as cities is less meaningful since things like traffic lights are regulated regionally. In some areas, however, a city taking the initiative for technology can have a great impact. One tourist oriented city puts free parking on all available lots and the return on the investment for the merchants is astronomical. One city invested in low cost internet access and reaped substantial benefits as hotel owners and cafe owners found tourists were hungry for it during the week. Internet kiosks in hotel lobbies rake in a mint despite being slow, poorly designed and poorly maintained.
Great points FG. I like to leave it to the marketplace to distribute the benefits of technology and thus I wonder how much of a role the Gov should play in high tech experimentation.
Rural WIFI was a neat concept but I think it’s not going well, and I suspect the private sector will reinvent that wheel more effectively than the bureaucracy can. However with private stuff you may leave out groups that can’t create a viable market for services.
I too have a preference for a diminished role of government in matters of technology (and other matters as well) but feel there will always be an effect similar to that provided by road construction, bus stops, parking regulations, etc. Any governmental actions will have impact of some sort, but local merchants tend to move faster. Rural internet access enhances the income of resorts, motels and restaurants but it undoubtedly affects the local dry cleaner also. The Chamber of Commerce oriented website content can affect the local economies and a chamber of commerce usually moves faster than a governmental entity.
FG I’d like to see more experiments/study of similar situations where you privatize one while you let Govt handle the other. There’s a big controversy now in over privatizing water supplies which is often favored by World Bank, but has had mixed results. Obviously situations vary but when in doubt we should fall back on Jefferson:
“The government is best which governs least”
Many ‘studies’ are hardly neutral. Any public service union can come up with a list of studies on the dangers of privatization of various governmental functions but such studies are often advocacy documents. Its the same way with studies of the benefits to a city from building a stadium with public funds: the studies are plentiful and the researchers usually have ties to the lobbyists.
Nearby you is Grants Pass with its two privately owned fire companies (at least a few years ago that was the situation) and you can find a good many comparisons of innovation in privately owned Rural/Metro versus moribund city fire departments. The trouble with privatization is that there are various forms just as there are various forms of non profit income streams. The non profit Education Testing Service makes a lot of money selling the research and the reports. Some privatization of the NYC inter-agency mail delivery differed radically from most privatizations and many such privitizations fail to consider off the books costs.
There have been access squabbles over wifi signals at airports versus free municipal wifi signals. A good deal of technology gets developed only if it can be structured in such a way as it can be metered and be the basis for an identified revenue stream.
I live in Harrisonburg, and I have lots of reasons to question claims in the press about the success of this project. Story link. No one else is reporting it, but the project is currently in trouble.