Brownsburg Goes Wireless

(Disclosure: I learned about this from a friend who owns the company that brought the proposal to Brownsburg’s town council.)

Municipal networks are different than privately-owned networks (like wireless hotspots or traditional cable/phone providers) because the city owns the infrastructure and ultimate control over how people may access it (and how much to charge for it). In this way, municipal networks can be thought of like traditional utilities such as water or electricity.

Other cities like Chicago, San Fransisco, Philadelphia, and (closer to home) Beech Grove are busy developing city-owned wireless networks, but Indianapolis is not among them.

There’s also the added twist of the recently resurrected telecom bill -- currently working its way through Indiana’s legislature -- which has a clause that would restrict cities from establishing their own broadband networks. The bill, if passed, would allow existing municipal broadband networks to be grandfathered in, but in the future, cities would not be able to establish their own networks. I've heard arguments that this clause is a non-issue for large metropolitan areas like Indianapolis (where existing service providers would be able to slug it out for customers, theoretically lowering prices in the process) but it seems like a bad deal for rural areas where big telecom has little interest in building the necessary infrastructure for high-speed Internet connectivity.

The Brownsburg proposal includes free access for lower bandwidth users (56k). To get more bandwidth, individuals or businesses will need to pay a monthly charge.