Subterranean homesick privatization

Happy hump day, Baltimore. To those of you that signed up for this newsletter after I badgered you during a Baltimore Innovation Week event, welcome! For the rest of you: Hello again! 

BIW programming continued at a steady clip today, with more insightful talks and panels that featured the likes of  Paulo Gregory (Cohado, Black Butterfly Network), Seema Iyer (Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance), Enrica Jang (Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum) and other notable local leaders. But today, my thoughts are on something that might almost literally shake the ground below all of us.

The Baltimore Banner reported that Mayor Brandon Scott today proposed a $50,000 contract with FMI Capital Investors that several councilors argued could risk putting Baltimore's underground conduit system — a 700-mile underground network of wiring for phones, electricity and internet — up for sale without adequate public feedback. City Council President Nick Mosby ultimately pushed a vote on the contract to after the November election, during which city residents will vote on a ballot measure that asks if we should ban potential privatization of this system.

The debate over the system's future, as the article noted, is set against a backdrop of city negotiations with BGE, questions about the conduit system's usefulness (especially when telecoms instead build 5G towers) and if privatization could stall the mayor's quest for a more connected, digitally equitable city.

But what do you think about the contract, the ballot measure or the overall issue? Is a conduit system useful enough to keep in city hands? Would selling it make our already entrenched digital divide even worse? Would the positives of privatization outweigh the negatives?

Let us know your thoughts by replying to this email or sending another to baltimore@technical.ly.

– Technical.ly editor Sameer Rao (sameer@technical.ly)