The city of Paris is considering a municipal fiber network of some sort. Details of the plan were hard to come by, as the mayor's office didn't reply to any of my questions, which were all admittedly scavenged from my threadbare memory of high school French class. ("Où est la bibliothèque?" "Quelle heure est-il?")

Publicly owned fiber has become in vogue globally, and cities that haven't at least considered it seem at risk of being perceived as passé. (Remember Seattle?) Historically, the main thrust of arguments in favor of municipal fiber networks was a languor in the private sector. That's still present, but what's coming to the fore increasingly now is the argument that it should be done because other cities are already doing it. Take for example this recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Becca Vargo Daggett, a researcher with the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

"In the six years our city has been trying to persuade the private sector to build a modern information infrastructure, scores of other cities already have built their own," Becca Vargo Daggett wrote, combining the two points. Becca Vargo Daggett (I refuse to shorten a name like that or replace it with some lesser pronoun) details the trouble Minneapolis has had trying to get its incumbent carriers to deploy fiber--starting eight paragraphs into her column. But as high up as the second paragraph, Becca Vargo Daggett wrote, "More than 100 U.S. cities, including five in Minnesota, already have decided they were competent to build and manage high-speed information networks." There's a little bit of Viking pride lurking there. If those other towns can do it, why can't we? Who do they think they are, anyway, trying to show us up? We're Minne-freakin'-sota!

The primary arguments for municipal fiber are increasingly taking that competitive keep-up-with-the-Joneses tone. While the need for cities to maintain modern telecom infrastructure will be key to their competitiveness, municipalities and residents should be careful not to fall prey to a glass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side mentality. Muni FTTP networks are not for every town. As the city of Lafayette, La., has discovered, such projects come with all manner of obstacles, including the mounting legal expenses it takes to defend the project from local incumbents' lawyers. Even Verizon Communications is feeling pressure from investors to justify its FTTP rollout. It's great PR for any town to be known as the "city of lights," but it takes a lot more than flipping a switch.

Heard any optical gossip? E-mail me at EGubbins@prismb2b.com.