FCC's "Gigabit City Challenge"

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has called for at least one gigabit  community in all 50 U.S. states by 2015, and suggests that broadband providers,  state and municipal community leaders figure out a way to make that happen, to create a critical mass of communities.

The FCC also plans to create a new online clearinghouse of best practices "to collect and disseminate information about how to lower the costs and increase the speed of broadband deployment nationwide, including to create gigabit communities."

The Gigabit City Challenge will of course face some obstacles. Some will say local governments, state governments and the FCC itself, which never have had the political appetite or power to compel massive "municipal broadband infrastructure" projects, will face tougher obstacles over the next couple of decades.

If a municipality really wants to build its own infrastructure, on a wide scale, in markets where strong cable and telco operations already exist, mobile service providers and satellite providers, there will be an obvious business model problem, namely that the market probably cannot support a new provider. 

"Overbuilding" generally has proven to be a difficult business proposition, historically. 

One might suppose that someday, one dominant provider in many markets might decide it makes sense to build and operate a wholesale network of this sort. That likely would not be a cable operator, given that industry's historic resistance to such notions.

Telcos have been no more willing, historically to trade away their right to use scarce infrastructure, either. Whether thinking might change some decades hence is hard to predict or foresee. 

The other problem would seem to be that, even if the political will and political power could be amalgamated, it is not so clear that a large municipality, or even a state, could afford the indebtedness required to underwrite a large gigabit network. 

That might have been feasible some decades ago. It certainly will not be a reasonable option over the next couple of decades, and maybe never again.