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If you build it, they may sue you. A state project funded by federal stimulus money aims to build more than 600 miles of fiber optic infrastructure, expanding broadband access in Central Wisconsin and providing an alternative to the privately owned networks already in place. In response, a trade association representing Wisconsin telecom companies is considering a lawsuit to halt the project.

The University of Wisconsin Extension has led the project, which won $32.3 million in stimulus grants in August. The new fiber optic lines would stretch from existing networks to the Platteville, Wausau, Superior and Eau Claire areas. Within the communities, the networks will be owned and governed as “Community Area Networks” (CANs) by coalitions of public and non-profit entities: the hospitals, schools, universities and local governments that are helping to fund the new networks.

Outside of the communities, in the “long haul” sections of the lines stretching from existing networks in southern Wisconsin or elsewhere, bandwidth will be owned by the UW System, the state Department of Transportation and CCI Systems, a Michigan-based telecom company that won the bid to construct the network. It’s also contributing $2.3 million to the project. The bandwidth could be sold to businesses, including internet service providers or other telecom companies, allowing them access to the networks.

But the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association contends that UW’s involvement in the project is illegal because state law says the UW Board of Regents can’t provide telecom services “that are available from a private telecommunications carrier to the general public or to any other public or private entity.” Bill Esbeck, the group’s president, says, “We believe that governs the activity that’s contemplated here.” The services envisioned by the project, he says, “are already being provided by private companies.”

UW argues that broadband access in the areas benefitting from the project is relatively limited. The new networks would provide high-speed connections to 182 school, government and hospital facilities in the target areas. “Some of these areas have some broadband connectivity but they don’t have anything of the speed or reliability being planned,” says UW System spokesman David Giroux. He says of the telecom association’s charge, “We are not going to get into the business of selling Internet service to anyone.”

Much of the required $13.81 million match for the two federal grants (one large one for the construction and a smaller one for an accompanying education program aimed at the CAN communities) is coming from UW’s partners in the project – the local institutions that will benefit from the new networks and also CCI Systems. About a quarter of the match will be provided not in cash but by “in-kind” services.

Joining the private sector group’s objection to the project are four members of the state Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, State Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington), State Rep. Phil Montgomery (R-Green Bay), State Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon). They wrote a letter to the committee’s Democratic leadership on Sept. 22 asking that the committee review the project. They cite the same state statute as the telecom association. “Clearly the legislature has already weighed in against UW becoming a provider of telecommunications services,” the letter says. The legislators argue that the CANs “appear to duplicate and needlessly compete with BadgerNet, the state’s successful broadband network provided by local telephone companies under a contract with the Department of Administration.”

BadgerNet is a consortium of telecom providers in the state that, under the contract, agree to provide phone and video conferencing services to all schools, libraries and government agencies in the state at a stable, low rate. The fiber optic network planned could be used for phone and internet systems. According to a 2009 report by the American Library Association, most institutions that buy phone service from BadgerNet get their Internet from WiscNet, a non-profit Internet provider that actually predates BadgerNet. It was formed in 1991 to provide access to universities in the state.

CANs represent a different model in telecom infrastructure, according to a 2004 report by researchers from Hungary and the University of Texas. They have become increasingly popular in Europe and the United States and “can create the climate for attracting new businesses” by offering companies greater access to telecom networks that are traditionally controlled by existing service providers. A CAN in the Chicago area, CivicNet, was created to foster competition.

Eau Claire, which would connect to the UW project, has already built a smaller CAN in a partnership with other governments, schools and hospitals in the Chippewa Valley region. The network has been online and expanding since 2004. “We’re running at speeds you can’t purchase commercially, and we’re doing it at a rate where the phone company doesn’t have anything to offer us,” says Ross Wilson, an information technology director for Cooperative Education Services Agency 10, a regional service agency for school districts in central Wisconsin.

WiscNet has agreed to provide Internet service to public institutions hooked up to the new networks planned under the UW project. It’s not clear yet if the new lines will lead institutions to drop BadgerNet phone service. The stimulus grants run for three years, says Maria Alvarez Stroud, manger of the project for the UW Extension. She says UW isn’t expecting the project to be reviewed by Joint Finance. “We believe it won’t be,” she says.

Meanwhile, according to Esbeck, the telecom association is “considering all alternatives, including legal recourse.”

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