There are many in this country who love the idea of government providing us with certain services that are now provided by the private sector. Health care is a big one, and lately free wi-fi internet access has become another one. Some cities have spent citizens’ tax dollars to erect wi-fi systems which blankets the municipality in question with “free” internet.
Many (including the writers at the popular technology blog Gizmodo) have cheered the creation of these tax-funded public internet systems, but now that cheering has died off as one of the “free” internet systems in Boston has come up against the problem with all government-managed services: They’re run by stupid politicians.
Apparently the bureaucrats in Boston have decided that the popular technology/politics/pop culture/cool-stuff-in-general blog Boing Boing isn’t fit for public consumption and have decided to block it from being accessed through the city’s internet system. Why? Because the blog used a “banned combination phrase.” Whatever the hell that rather Orweillian-sounding term means. And if Boston can ban Boing Boing for disallowed “combination phrases” how long until they’re banning political sites for, say, “hate speech” (PC-speech for criticism) against Islam? Or criticism against a politician who just happens to be in a position to ban websites on the public system?
The point here is that the politicians in Boston have created a public internet system, and now are starting to decide what sort of content the public can access on it. Which might not sound like that big of a deal given that not everybody uses the public system, but when combined with the impact a tax-funded internet system has on the marketplace of internet service providers in general it becomes a huge deal.
Remember that when citizens have access to “free” wi-fi wherever they’re at in a city their demand for private internet service from companies that provide it is going to be diminished. It’ll become more of a specialty service for internet users who want to go beyond (faster download/upload speeds, access to pages like Boing Boing, etc.) what the public internet system can do, and those wanting it will have to pay more for it because the customer base for the service will have shrunk. Think of it in terms of postal delivery. We all pay to fund the post office, but if we want services above and beyond what the USPS is able to offer we pay a premium for it to companies like FedEx and UPS.
These increased prices for private internet service may not have happened yet as publicly-funded wi-fi is still a pretty new and rare thing, but it’s coming.
For Bostonians, this means that if they want to access websites outside the scope of what the dumb politicians in that city think is good for them, they’ll have to not only pay their taxes to fund the “free” wi-fi system the city manages but also pay for private internet service at an inflated price caused by the aforementioned “free” public wi-fi system.
Doesn’t sound like such a good deal now, does it? It isn’t a good deal, as I pointed out nearly three years ago when these municipal internet systems were first being discussed.