"The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom" has proposed ten facets of a net neutrality info-structure criteria. One of the facets that I am particular interested in is that the business model of implementing net neutrality should also be “neutral” too. Municipalities, non-profits, public-private partnerships, as well as private corporations should all be allowed to compete for such service. In fact, as the author has pointed out, lack of competition over information transmission service providers can severely slow the development of affordable technologies, while in a democratic society that celebrates information freedom, it is a part of the providers’ social responsibility to make advancements and provide citizens with easy and affordable information access. Therefore, the vision of introducing players of different kind may be a good solution to corporation-monopolized networking service. City government and non-profit organization can be the optimum choice for Net Neutrality implementation because they are not driven by profits, and on a local basis it is not as likely to result in monopoly as the state government.
On the other hand, we should not forget the big ambitious municipalities had about becoming the single provider of Wi-Fi services in city areas. This has resulted in failure due to the great investment and risk whatever the infrastructure builder was carried on. Additionally, in a recent blog post from Joel Shurkin, it seems that not only the business model didn’t work out, but also some natures of the Wi-Fi technology do not permit such big installations. Same with the net neutrality issue, a question for municipalities to remember is the technological plausibility.
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