Matt Ballin’s article, “wirelesslessness” (May 10), exemplifies everything that’s wrong with the wireless debate in America today. His shoddy reporting falls well below the standards of The Wire, a paper I’ve come to trust. If the editors of The Wire want to keep the trust of their readers, they need to look closer at the facts.

First, Ballin cites a Nebraska law that prohibits public wireless infrastructure. But he fails to mention that 13 other states have similar laws on the books, and that number is expected to grow as big telecoms continue to buy off state governments to keep cities from doing what their constituents want. The classic case (curiously missing in Ballin’s account) is the case of Philadelphia. Philly decided to use public bonds along with private investment to build a public/private infrastructure that could provide broadband access to the entire city for less than $20 a month. That plan was almost halted in its tracks by state intrusion in the form of the “Verizon bill,” a bill that sought to stop cities like Philadelphia from providing wireless broadband. It passed, but with a last-second compromise that allowed the Philadelphia plan to move forward. Ballin’s article makes the Nebraska law seem like an anomaly. It most emphatically is not.

Ballin also mischaracterizes the threat of municipal wireless to corporations. He quotes Capitalism Magazine, an obscure right-wing Ayn Rand Web site, that warns darkly of cities that might “force people to buy their products, impose taxes or fees on people who choose a competitor … or exempt themselves from regulations.” Ballin fails to mention that these are precisely the things that corporations do when they gain control of public utilities (which a wireless network is).

Look at what happened in California after they deregulated electricity rates. The corporations moved in, monopolized the futures market, and prices skyrocketed. The only places in California where prices remained stable was in cities with municipal power companies. As for the worry that a city might “impose taxes and fees on those who would choose a competitor,” try getting out of your cell phone plan or your broadband plan before the end of your one or two-year commitment period.

By far the most egregious omission in Ballin’s article, however, was a complete lack of discussion over whether expanding wireless Internet access is in the public’s interest. Here on the “ecoast” we should be embarrassed about our near total lack of wireless Internet access points. Nine months a year I have to drive to Rye to find a café with free wireless. Ballin touts the Starbucks T-Mobile plan without mentioning that its fees are astronomical. Starbucks wireless costs $6 a day, even if you just check your e-mail for 30 seconds, or $30 a month, more than many broadband service plans for the home! I certainly don’t blame T-Mobile for wanting to protect such huge profits, but are enormous profits the only thing we care about in America?

I suppose if you’re a libertarian Ayn Rand adherent, the answer is yes, but in my opinion low-cost high quality networks are important to grow businesses and to enrich the community. According to an article by Robert McChesney and John Podesta in the Washington Monthly, American residents and businesses now pay two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality service than countries like South Korea or Japan. Since 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband penetration. Thomas Bleha recently argued in Foreign Affairs that what passes for broadband in the United States is “the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world.” While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that’s more than 10 times faster than what’s available here, for just $22 a month.

America is being left behind by the rest of the world, and if we don’t catch up soon, we’ll be the ones making plastic crap for Wal-Mart for a dollar a day. These countries are using public-private partnerships to pass us by, and we’re fiddling as our economic and technological advantage burns. There’s plenty of money to be made in public/private partnerships, but the telecoms don’t think that’s enough money. Their competition worries come down to a simple fear: that they won’t be able to extract as much money as they want from Americans.

Ballin doesn’t believe that Internet access is in the public’s interest, and cites as evidence that most people who don’t use the Internet aren’t interested, and thus “people who aren’t interested in paying to connect themselves to the Internet rarely want to pay for other people to be connected.” This is not an argument that holds water. Many people aren’t interested in driving, or education, or science, but that doesn’t mean we should stop funding roads or schools or scientific research. America can do better. Portsmouth can do better. In today’s global economy we must, or we’ll fall behind.