Throttle the price, rev the speed: Mayor de Blasio wants ideas on broadband

The Mayor’s Office for Tech and Innovation wants ideas for expanding access to broadband. The city is both looking for demonstration projects and policy suggestions. More details in the link, but, in short, if you have ideas for ways in which the city could deploy better broadband and get more people online, City Hall wants to hear it.
The city wants to hear input on both structural problems and ways to bring down the price of connectivity. Economic disparities between the rich and poor have been a hallmark of the de Blasio administration, but the “Call for Innovations” points out that rich and poor can come together on one point: everyone pays too much for too little here.

New Yorkers currently pay significantly higher prices for slower Internet service in comparison to other international cities around the world. On the lower-cost end of broadband service, subscribers in New York City pay nearly $1,000 per year — more than double the price for standard broadband services in many international cities. On the high-end of broadband service, customers in cities like Seoul and Tokyo can receive Internet access at speeds of 1,000 Mbps for under $35/month.

Submit an idea
The city put out a pair of PDF documents to spur questions, one with background info and another with prompts.
The documents raise compelling points, such as:

• Could Empire City Subway operate its conduits better? No, not that subway; the one that holds all of our cable and telephone infrastructure. It’s currently wholly owned by Verizon in Manhattan and the Bronx.
• Actually, a lot of different entities run a lot of different conduits under longstanding legal franchises with the city.
• What policies could make access better for tenants in rental buildings? What could provide more access to people living in public housing?
• Are there carrier-neutral ways that New York City could make it more feasible to close the “last mile” or lower the cost of reaching underserved areas?
• Why isn’t price competition lowering the price of home internet service among the three big providers?
• What can encourage small commercial internet providers to build networks out to more remote commercial districts in the outer boroughs?
• Could light poles help? Elevated trains? Highway overpasses? Mesh networks?
• Did you know the city has its own government-only high-speed wireless network? It does. One report in 2012 said it costs $38 million to run and it’s not used much. The city’s IT department has a “Request for Expression of Interest” (whatever that means) out about it now.

Our ideas

In terms of policy that wouldn’t cost much but might make a difference, an exec at Google Fiber advocates for a Federal “dig once” policy. In other words, whenever a road is torn up, that conduit would be laid down for fiber to be installed by any provider that wanted to install it. It’s not building the fiber, it’s just building the conduit.
Would a similar policy help close the last mile in New York city? It would be interesting to hear about.
That said, it could run afoul of some of these permanent conduit franchises we’ve granted, but perhaps those should be revisited?
We’ve already pointed out that the Brooklyn Public Library gets more people online than any other local institution.
We’ll be curious to see how well the forthcoming free public kiosks work, but WiFi outside doesn’t really sound that great for doing real work on a computer. We’re also more than a little skeptical of the gigabit speeds claimed for LinkNYC. The Verge agrees with us on this point, though the latest WiFi systems using 802.11ac standards can theoretically deliver that kind of speed — if anyone is carrying around devices that can take advantage of it. LinkNYC’s press documentation never provides any technical details.
We’ve reached out to a number of entities that we think might weigh in on ideas for better connections. We’ll follow up if we find out about any interesting ideas that come out of Brooklyn.