The battle for broadband mind and market share certainly is not limited to the wireline side of the telecom industry, where the most contentious issue currently dominating the market is the rising competitive fervor between incumbent carriers with fiber-to-the-home plans and operators of municipal networks with similar ambitions. As that realm gets bogged down by underhanded marketing schemes and lobbying tactics, carriers on the wireless side are facing a parallel kind of competition from the developers of municipal Wi-Fi buildouts and wireless networks of other varieties.

Though few telecom service providers would admit it — and most, in fact, would vehemently deny it — the municipal network trend actually represents significant potential for carriers, especially on the wireless side. As Vince Vittore's cover story in this issue explores, the municipal Wi-Fi networks becoming increasingly more prevalent in cities around the country are suffering, in many cases, from a lack of experienced personnel to operate and manage them. Therein lies a huge opportunity for carriers, which are obviously already experts at network operation and administration functions.

Most carriers, wireless and wireline, talk (almost without exception) about the complementary nature of virtually all technologies and how they don't perceive this or that effort as competitive because it all fits together somehow. But that's all it is — talk. The fact is that most service providers do view muni networks of all varieties as strong threats to their businesses. And that's a short-sighted view, if you ask me — especially when you consider the added revenue potential of becoming the outsourced network administrator and manager for muni networks.

While I don't buy for a second the “can we all just get along” notion that most carriers adopt as their public position on rival technology formats (EV-DO versus Wi-Fi versus WiMAX, for example), I do think there is more harmony between carrier networks and municipal networks than carriers are willing to acknowledge. Innovation comes from all over, and innovation that takes place in municipal systems — while it may temporarily draw customers away from carrier offerings — ultimately will only benefit the overall advancement of technology and communications services.

Perhaps the time and resources of carriers of all stripes would be better directed toward figuring out how an ostensibly competitive network effort might offer some revenue-generating opportunity. Burning it up in a battle against the very existence of competitive efforts is a futile exercise.