You can benefit from knowing your local, state, and federal representatives.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [January 23, 2007]

Your Federal representatives are easy to find. They're at house.gov and senate.gov. At least once per year, write to your Federal representatives and tell them what's important to you. You only get to vote once, but you can write often. Representatives keep track of which issues are important to their constituents, although they are, of course, unlikely to read your letter. Furthermore, the price of meeting a member of Congress is too high for any small business. If you have a few thousand dollars to spare, you can have dinner with anyone at a fundraiser, but doing so may not be worth your while.

The representatives in your state house may be more accessible. Depending on who they are and where you live, it may be worth your while to attend an event, for about $100, where you could get the chance to talk to your representative. More importantly, keep track of your representative's stand on the issues. Some states have a high turnover, others have lower turnover. At the very least, know whether or not you want this person back in office for the next election.

For an ISP, the most important politician is the local Mayor. You should also know a few of the people on your local town council. If you're regional, you will not devote your time to getting to know any one mayor, but you should know the names and policies of the mayors in areas that are important to your business.

Municipal broadband
Every ISP needs to know whether there are plans for municipal or powerline broadband in their local area. ISP-Planet believes any government-funded ISP should be a public-private partnership, with the local entity providing some of the funds and the business supplying the management expertise.

Allegany County, Maryland-based Conxx (see The ATM WISP) is a case study of how it should be done. Our article on Conxx shows how the partnership worked:

The initial buildout for AllCoNet2 cost $4.7 million, of which $2 million came from the state, $2 million from the federal government, and $700,000 was raised through a local bond issue.

The worst case scenario? That would be one where a mayor hires some friends to build a network and blocks all ISPs from connecting to it. We're guessing this has happened a few times around the U.S., but have not reported any specific cases, although we are looking in to a few, including one where the government business operated out of the local public library, and people thought their fees were going to the library, which was not the case. . .

Negotiating with the upstream
Another key feature of the Conxx business is that the company persuaded Level 3 to break open its fiber network for the county-wide ISP. Every ISP needs an upstream, and dealing with the upstream gets harder each year as the various providers get bought out and local conditions deteriorate into oligopoly or even monopoly pricing.

This growing problem affects every ISP, from dialup providers to T-1 resellers.

Conclusion
In summary, you want to know the politicians in order to prevent errors and cronyism, and in order to take advantage of opportunities. If you know your politicians, you can at the very least be forwarned when trouble's brewing, and you might be forearmed. You might even turn a potentially tough problem into an opportunity, as Conxx did when it obtained special upstream facilities by proving to Level 3 that there was real demand for broadband in Maryland's most rural county, Allegany.

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