Pajama Entrepreneur

One of the fun things about blogging is being famous for … what people think you’re famous for (uncritical fan of any muni Wi-Fi project, Tropos fan girl, whatever). In my case, I built a blog called Muniwireless.com and turned it into a niche tech publishing company (with research products and conferences) with the help of Microcast Communications.

I am, and continue to be, a big fan of cheaper, faster broadband not just for geeks like me, but for everybody. I believe that to achieve fast, cheap ubiquitous broadband (not the 512 Kbps upstream junk that some people love to call broadband) but real broadband that allows high definition happiness via Joost or some other video on demand service, you will need: (a) a regime that has a real broadband policy that encourages competition on the service level and (b) structural separation (or in the interim, local loop unbundling with mix of infrastructure owned not by the same people trying to sell you Internet access). That means some government regulation is needed to ensure competition.

How do you know your home market has crappy broadband (and little competition)? Check out this article: US Broadband Speeds Can’t Support Joost. Replace “US” with the name your country — how fun is that? How does it feel to be a tech backwater falling further behind?

As a small entrepreneur, I am very sensitive to big firms with overwhelming market power squeezing out little gals like me. I am especially furious when big firms use their power to lobby corrupt and/or stupid politicians to devise rules that continue to let them have so much market power that they deprive me and my fellow entrepreneurs of choice — choice of broadband service level and price. That is why I am a big fan of the Amsterdam CityNet FTTH project and many of the fiber projects - private, public and private-public. No one model fits all but you need to think about which model to use to achieve the results you want. You cannot be doctrinaire about it and say “all government intervention is bad”. And I am still not happy with what I consider to be the very slow deployment of FTTH in the Netherlands. Like many governments, there are many in ours who think that it’s enough to have Telco versus Cable. Wrong!

So I am pissed off when a “think tank” residing at Reason.org who is nothing more than a front piece for the lobby-happy telecom industry starts saying that I will start sounding like them. I will slit my own throat before I become a telco sock puppet like them. I posted this comment on their blog:

Actually there is one reason I will never sound like you. I am not a telco sock puppet, like you. Where I live - Amsterdam - we are not waiting for the Invisible Hand to do its job with broadband. Europe is ahead and we are going to have Joost while the rest of America waits to get video on demand. I’m not saying government should do everything (I am an entrepreneur with several other businesses, Muniwireless is just one). I believe in looking at each situation and finding out what works best — sometimes you need more government help, sometimes you don’t. I am not a doctrinaire like you. And I don’t kiss TELCO ass.