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Low cost and fast broadband can reduce traffic by supporting tele-commuting. New clean business can start and existing can grow.

Mill Valley has rather dated telecommunication infrastructure and this "last" mile is the bottleneck in providing cheap and fast broadband. As are only two "broadband" providers this does not lend to competition. Prices are high, broadband is slow.

There is one telephone central office that is serving Mill Valley. The old copper infrastructure does not lend itself to the broadband speeds needed for video conferencing and multimedia demands. The cable company provides very expensive and congested broadband.

Many cities are looking into and deploying municipal broadband with fiber in order to break the duopoly of the telephone and cable companies. There are two-flavors of municipal deployment: the municipality becomes the Internet provider or the municipality becomes the last mile provider and companies can compete to be the Internet provider.

I would like to propose that the City of Mill Valley investigate what it would take to provide a carrier neutral telecommunications infrastructure certainly by 2040.

(I should disclose I am currently working with the City of San Francisco Department of Technology on a municipal fiber deployment to every street address in SF. Of course I would like to see there here as I live in Mill Valley. - Tim)