After Pennsylvania Governor Rendell signed HB 30, a bill that requires municipalities to ask permission from local telephone companies if they want to provide telecommunications services, much was made of the fact that the proposed free (or low cost) WiFi service in Philadelphia would not be affected. In some last minute negotiations, Verizon, the principal backer of the bill, Rendell, and the city came to an agreement (the details of which are not yet available) that would allegedly ensure that the bill’s requirements would not apply to the city of brotherly love.

Public interest advocates should be commended for the attention they brought to this bill. But the smart ones know that while they may have won the battle for Philadelphia, they lost the war for the rest of the state of Pennsylvania. Under HB 30, all other municipalities seeking to provide WiFi or other low cost telecommunications services will first have to seek the blessing of their local telecommunications provider. So the residents of Philadelphia may benefit, but the citizens of Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie and many other smaller cities are just plain out of luck.

HB 30 was a wake-up call to supporters of low cost Wi-Fi – many similar laws are already on the books all over the country, and more are sitting in state legislatures. There are two huge opportunities here: 1) to engage the grassroots - the WiFi issue is bite sized, understandable and one where people feel that they are losing something. Nearly 10,000 people viewed PK’s “action alert” on HB 30, and over 1500 sent letters to Governor Rendell over a six day period and 2) to engage local telephone companies like Verizon in a dialogue about the importance of, and the best way to implement low cost broadband services to communities. I can assure you that Verizon was taken completely by surprise by the grassroots fervor and public attention paid to this bill, and I have urged them to sit down with community WiFi advocates. Demonizing these companies hurts over the long run – if they can be convinced that providing lost cost WiFi themselves ultimately helps their business, everyone will come out the winner.

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