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Jim Baller of The Baller Herbst Law Group is the attorney representing both the municipalities that were targeted by a study by the Heartland Institute that aimed to show that municipal wireless/ISPs were a losing proposition. They have fought back against the studies claims, citing “mistakes, misinterpretations, unsupported and insupportable claims, irrelevancies, innuendos, key omissions and obvious untruths,”:

The chief problem with the Heartland study, said Baller, is in author Steven Titch's interpretation of the Bristol data, notably his discussion of the financial losses the system has run in its first three years. Instead of using EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) numbers, as is usually done in the communications industry, he said, Titch uses the losses Bristol has reported that include depreciation of its capital assets.

“A positive EBITDA means that a company is generating enough revenue to cover the daily operating expenses of running the business,” Baller said. “That is particularly important here because a substantial portion of the ‘loss' shown [in the Heartland report] is attributable to non-cash depreciation.”

Based on EBITDA numbers, the Bristol FTTH network is actually projected to run ahead of plan this year at $2.06 million, and has been on or ahead of target in all but one of its four years of operation.