New York City approves broadband advisory committee

Computerworld - The New York City Council today approved a public broadband advisory committee that will conduct hearings and advise the city's leaders on options for high-speed Internet access.
City Council member Gale Brewer sponsored the legislation creating the commission, partly to educate the public about new technologies such as WiMax, public Wi-Fi and even broadband over power lines. "New York City is one of the most wired cities in the U.S., but we are falling behind our international competitors," said Brewer, chairwoman of the city's Committee on Technology in Government.
New York's boroughs are served by DSL and cable broadband service, but two cable providers have split the city into two separate territories, and only Verizon Communications Inc. offers DSL service, meaning some residents have just a single broadband option. About 38% of city residents subscribe to broadband, a number Brewer believes could be higher with more technology options and lower costs. Those comments came in testimony at a hearing earlier in December.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has supported private-sector provisioning of broadband, is expected to OK the advisory committee, said Bruce Lai, Brewer's chief of staff.
The new Broadband Advisory Committee would "review the ways and methods of using municipal resources to accelerate the build-out of current, emerging and any newly developed broadband technologies and other advanced telecommunications and information services," according to the legislation. The committee will have 15 members, eight to be appointed by the mayor and seven by the speaker of the city council. The committee would be disbanded at the end of 2008.
New York is an important new frontier for Wi-Fi or other wireless technology, given its 8 million residents and its geography of boroughs separated by waterways, analysts have noted. New Orleans, Philadelphia and San Francisco are already implementing public Wi-Fi, as are about 300 other municipalities in North America, according to Yankee Group Research Inc. in Boston.
Some cities, including Philadelphia, have battled incumbent service providers to set up public broadband. In those cases, service providers have typically argued that broadband is a domain of private sector providers, not the government and that public broadband service would cut into service providers' revenues. Meanwhile, public broadband proponents support lower-cost connections for the poor and want services that can also be used by public workers, including police and firefighters while on the job.