Towns and cities are considering setting up their own broadband services for their towns, rather than having their townfolk use one of several internet providers.

The idea is called municipal broadband, and it’s gaining traction in the wake of a crippling strike by FairPoint workers, which has made customer service with the telecommunications giant all but impossible. Several bills have been sponsored this session in the legislature to make it possible for towns to provide internet service to their communities. The benefit to the towns is obvious — a small capital investment and a human resources investment in a couple of technicians would allow the towns to offer inexpensive broadband services and keep the revenue for themselves, or they could contract with service providers to manage the system. There would be no shareholders to skim off some of the profits.

That would also be the benefit for the citizens of the towns. With no shareholder stake, the towns could offer highspeed broadband at a lower cost than the large providers, and would be more accountable to the local residents and businesses.

A case in point is the town of Rockport, just up the coast, which built an ultra-fast municipal broadband system last year. The fiber optic system snakes through the village and serves the Maine Media College. The system is managed by a Maine local service provider, GWI Internet, and provides speeds of a gigabit per second — lightning fast compared to anything we currently have in the Mid-coast. Residents who buy into the line pay $69 per month, and $14 of that is to pay off the town’s initial investment, but that is still less than they have been paying for much slower service.

Rockport put up $75,000 for their service, with the money coming from the town, the college, and a few other large business partners. But some of the bills moving through the legislature now attempt to deal with that large initial investment, and would help towns set up their own local highspeed systems as economic development vehicles.

Ultra highspeed municipal broadband would come at a cost to the local telephone and cable companies, however. Undercut by nonprofit internet providers set up in a town office without a lot of overhead, FairPoint, Time Warner, Comcast, and other smaller firms would see their subscription rates decline.

So it’s not a surprise that the biggest of the companies, Time Warner, invited legislators for an “informational” junket at the Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth last month. Legislators were wined and dined on steak dinners and some were offered accommodation in rooms that could retail for as much as $355 per night, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

It’s not illegal or unethical for corporations to provide “informational sessions” for legislators, or even to pay for lodging, food and drink. But it does raise a red flag. Some of these legislators will be voting on issues related to telecommunications regulations in their committees or as part of omnibus bills in general session.

Legislators were lobbied during the event against public broadband. And Time Warner has donated more than $240,000 to politicians in Maine since 2008.

While companies have the right to make their case, they should do so in the halls of the Statehouse, and skip the boondoggle steak dinners and luxury accommodations.

Meanwhile, public broadband is the next great idea for Maine’s economic development outside of the major cities. It is an idea whose time has come.