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Journalism of Courage
Theres no reason for a city to be there,just a stream and a broad Appalachian valley. But Joseph Anderson wanted a city,and in the 1850s he willed one from the ground after a railway company built its state-line terminus on his father-in-laws farmland. He named it,oddly,Bristol,after one of Englands biggest ports. Paradise was his second choice. Now,after the decline of the areas timber and coal industries,paradise is what Bristol has left to sell. The citys cost of living is 20 per cent below the national average. The mountains beckon,as does NASCARs Bristol Motor Speedway. And Bristol offers what 87 per cent of Americas towns and counties lack: the optic-fibre internet.
Bristol,Virginia and Bristol,Tennessee face each other across State Street,six blocks with a restored art deco theatre and 14 empty shopfronts. To the north,electricity comes from Bristol Virginia Utilities,which answers to the city council,a common arrangement in rural America. In 1999 BVU ran optical fibre among its substations and city offices,at first purely for internal use. It used its fibre to save the city money on its phone exchange,but local businesses soon wanted the same service. Home internet service followed in 2002. Then,with 9m in state and federal grants,BVU pushed its fibre north to eight counties in Virginias Coalfield region.
Should cities be in the business of providing fast internet access? It depends on whether the internet is an investment or a product. BVU could not afford to maintain its fibre backbone without selling the internet to consumers. And it could not build a subscriber base without offering cable television and a telephone line as well; households these days expect a single price for all three services. This has put it in direct competition with firms that already offered limited DSL and cable-modem access,which are fast enough for watching YouTube but not for Northrop Grumman. Fibre is expensive,and a purely commercial business would not have been minded to pay for it.
All this is true for much of rural America,and it is an analogue of the reason why municipal utility companies were launched in the first place: to electrify thinly-populated areas where commercial utilities would not go. But it also raises the prickly question of competition. The Federal Communications Commission will have to take up this matter when it sends its broadband plan to Congress in March. Since 1995,at the urging of telecoms companies,18 states have erected barriers to entry for municipal utilities. In Florida,projects must prove positive cash-flow within four years; in Minnesota they require 65 per cent approval in a referendum.
Rick Boucher,south-western Virginias representative in Congress and a key figure in securing BVUs expansion grants,supported wording in the 1996 Telecommunications Act which,he thought,protected the right of any entity to enter the market. But many states have ruled that local governments are not entities in the required sense,an interpretation confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2004. Mr Boucher is trying to get a more watertight bill passed. In his district just as when the railway came when the fibre arrives,towns throw parties.
