FYI: Councilmember Gale Brewer’s special committee on technology wants the city to switch to a fiber-optic and wireless network, through which it can funnel all of its telecom needs. In a recently released report, Brewer’s committee pointed to model plans in Chicago and Pennsylvania, where local governments are packaging all of their telecom services and infrastructure needs in one big fiber/wireless contract and shopping it in the private sector, and in Austin, Texas, where the city is laying plans to have its own network. Brewer’s report details the regulatory and financing steps needed to make such models work in New York City. It also lodges pointed critiques of what it sees as a wasteful and “fractured” current system of buying telecom services. Three quarters of the city’s telecom comes from a non-competitive agreement with Verizon, and agencies largely handle the remaining quarter individually. [5/28/03]