Muni Wi-Fi not just another utility

Thanks for this thought-provoking article. You raise good reasons that municipalities should examine their business plan very carefully.

But I'd like to ask you not to accept statistics uncritically. As one example, your article states:

1. Competition. ... just 1% [of U.S. ZIP codes] had no competitors, Reason states.

This is a great sounding statistic, but it's meaningless. The granularity is too large because a ZIP code covers a lot of territory.

For example, the central village of my home ZIP code in northern New England is well served by DSL, cable *and* wireless broadband. But the remainder of the town is quite rural. That leaves not one percent, but about a quarter of households in our town with no competition or no broadband service at all.

I don't have any solutions for this. And I am certain that municipalities shouldn't rush in blindly, for all the reasons you cite. But please let's not publish misleading statistics. Thanks!

Rich Brown

Re: This article.