New Lines of Communication

Several municipalities around the country have launched, or are considering building, government-owned or -operated wireless-Internet networks, so lower-income citizens can access the Internet more affordably. Those efforts have met with fierce opposition from the major telephone companies, which have successfully lobbied in several states for laws prohibiting governments from operating such networks if they compete with private industry.

Dayton, who heads a consortium between Earthlink and SK Telecom Co., a leading mobile-communications firm in South Korea, said municipal wireless-Internet networks should be public-private partnerships.

Jeffrey A. Citron, chief executive of Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading provider of Internet phone service, sees an opportunity built less around alternative technologies and more around opening up competition.

"I'd come up with a plan for a trenching system" for major thoroughfares in New Orleans while the city is largely empty and undergoing repairs, he said. High-speed, fiber-optic cables are hugely expensive to lay, so the dominant phone companies have typically been the only ones to do so.

Citron said the city could dig the trenches and make them available, for suitable fees to help cover construction costs, to any carrier that wanted to lay cables to provide services -- including voice, digital television and Internet access.

With more companies potentially competing, Citron said, prices would come down.

Bill Smith, chief technology officer for BellSouth Corp., the Gulf Coast's primary phone carrier, paused for several seconds when presented with this idea.

"I would say that might not make sense for us" if too many competitors meant the percentage of the pie for each was too low, he said.

Smith said BellSouth is committed to rebuilding with an eye toward providing state-of-the-art technology that is largely Internet-based.

The company hopes, for example, to one day let consumers set their home video recorders from their cell phones.

Alexander H. Good, chief executive of Mobile Satellite Ventures LP of Reston, said satellite technology, in addition to other systems, would provide a more disaster-proof communication system for emergency responders, including police, fire and medical personnel.

He said his company is readying two new satellites with new capabilities. Although the satellites service the entire country, they could be pointed to a particular area in an emergency to provided expanded service.

Anthony Townsend, research director at the Institute for the Future in California, pointed out that many of those high-flown ideas could run up against a fundamental problem: The services rely on electricity, which often goes out during such disasters. The nation must focus on finding more flexible ways of distributing power, he said.