Sandvig, C. (2006). Disorderly infrastructure and the role of government. Government Information Quarterly 23(3/4): 503-506. http://research.niftyc.org/Disorderly_Infrastructure.pdf
This short (8 page) article was written as the introduction to a set of articles about government and wireless networks. The author, Christian Sandvig, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a part of the Project on Public Policy and Advanced Communication Technology: http://pactlab-dev.spcomm.uiuc.edu/home/. In this piece, he reflects on the questions: How do infrastructures usually come to exist; and, What role would we expect governments to play in infrastructure development?
In particular, Sandvig draws a parallel between the actions of local communities today in developing wireless infrastructure and the role of local governments and community cooperatives in creating the US telephone infrastructure in the early 1900's. As with today's community/municipal wireless projects, earlier communities, unable to get the service they needed from large telecommunications companies, took to building infrastructure themselves, resulting in important experiments that provided local telephone infrastructure, and ultimately influenced the industry as a whole. Sandvig writes: "The ideal role for local governments and communities is what it has often been in the early stages of new infrastructure development. It is to serve the forgotten and the dispossessed, to experiment and pioneer systems that meet overlooked local needs, to partner with enthusiasts in ways that push the technology forward, to apply pressure to legacy carriers by investing in alternative networks, and to foster competition by insisting on widespread service, reasonable rates, compatibility, and interconnection on reasonable terms," (p. 6).