Austin Council Ponders Internet for All Homes

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN (AP) - Is a proposal to build a new citywide telecommunications network in Austin a jump start on the city's 21st century economy?

Or is it just a pipe dream?

The City Council is set to decide Thursday whether to authorize negotiations to build such a network. It is supposed to provide an electronic pipe to every home and business in Austin and would allow access to everything the Internet offers computer users, even complex multimedia programs that involve video and sound.

The electronic pipe - a mix of fiber-optic lines and coaxial cable, which already is used to provide cable TV - would be big enough to carry a new cable company to compete with Austin CableVision and a telephone company to compete with Southwestern Bell.

Augie Grant of the College of Communications at the University of Texas says the network is as important to Austin's future as the first bridge built across the lower Colorado River.

"That bridge opened up transportation and commerce," Grant said. "This network is going to revolutionize commerce and business in this city."
Two UT faculty members involved in communication policy issues, Gary Chapman and Sharon Strover, also consider the telecommunications network crucial.

"If this plan is passed, Austin will be the only city in the entire United States with an alternative to the giant telecommunications companies that are rapidly absorbing the Internet, cable TV, telephone and other telecom services," the two said in an electronic mail message circulated on the Internet.

The council won't commit to a network proposal this week. Instead council members are scheduled to decide whether to negotiate a franchise agreement with CSW Communications of Austin, a subsidiary of a Dallas utility holding company, Central and South West Corp., to build the network.

Advocates say the network could prove a boon for the city's emerging multimedia industry.

"There is absolutely no doubt," Grant said of high-tech companies that could use such a network, "that if you build it, they will come. ... This will become the hotbed for innovation for the world."

Michael Kaufman, Southwestern Bell's vice president for Central and South Texas, says the proposal is dubious.
" 'Build it, they will come' is not our mentality."

Kaufman questioned the need for the proposed network and suggested it might violate a state law passed last year that bars cities from involvement in the telecommunications business.

Bill Carey, president of the Austin division of Time Warner Cable, which owns Austin CableVision, also questioned city involvement.

CSW Communications managing director, Bill Morrow, has said the network would cost at least $150 million, with no city money involved. That only pays for the network; it would cost millions more to install telephone switching equipment or cable broadcasting facilities.