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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits is a weekly audio show hosted by Community Broadband Networks Initiative Director Christopher Mitchell featuring interviews with people building community networks or otherwise involved with Internet policy. You can listen to episodes below or download via Apple, Google, or Spotify. Alternatively if you know what to do with it, copy the feed here.
We also produce a semi-regular video show called Connect This! that has its own site. Find other podcasts from ILSR here.
We also have an index of all episodes and links to transcripts. Keep up with new developments by subscribing to our one-email-per-week list sharing new stories and resources. We’d love to hear your feedback! Email us.
Scarlett McGrady Explains Virginia's Wired Road
The Wired Road is an ambitious fiber optic and wireless project offering Internet access to several underserved areas in rural Virginia. For the 31st episode of our Community Broadband Bits Bits podcast, Scarlett McGrady joins me to discuss its history and impact on the region.
McGrady is the Director of the Grant Community Computing Center [link to Facebook page], which providers a variety of services including computer literacy courses.
Jason Bird Explains how Princeton Kept Jobs in Community with Publicly Owned Fiber Network
Jason Bird is the Electrical Superintendent at the city of Princeton Utilities in Illinois. He joins us for the 30th episode of our Community Broadband Bits Podcast to explain why Princeton built a rather unique network. Princeton has built a fiber network to connect some of the local businesses and uses broadband over power lines (BPL) to provide a low cost option for area residents.
Princeton offers another example of how a community can build and own the infrastructure while partnering with a local company that will provision the services.
Susan Crawford, Captive Audience, and How to Kill the Cable Monopoly
Susan Crawford, author of the just-released Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, is our guest for the 29th episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast.
Community Broadband Bits 28 - Bruce Kushnick
If you think the United States cannot afford to take a fiber optic cable to just about every home in the country, you might be surprised to find out that we have already paid for it. We just haven't received it. Our first podcast guest in 2013, Bruce Kushnick of the New Networks Institute, explains the $300 billion ripoff.
Bruce and I discuss how the big telephone companies promised to build a fiber optic Internet in return for being allowed to increase their prices.
Best of 2012 Community Broadband Bits
I meant to post this over the Holiday Break but it fell through the cracks. So, at the beginning of 2013, here are some of our best moments from the 2012 Weekly Podcast, Community Broadband Bits.
Read the transcript from this episode here.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Community Broadband Bits 26 - Josh Wallace, Palo Alto
This week, Josh Wallace from the City of Palo Alto Utilities joins us to talk about the City's dark fiber network for episode 26 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. Josh describes how the dark fiber network connects businesses, offering incredibly high capacity connections at affordable flat rate pricing.
The utility charges an upfront fee to make a dark fiber connection, which means that nearly all the ongoing revenues are net income.
Community Broadband Bits 25 - Dewayne Hendricks Returns
Dewayne Hendricks has returned for his second appearance on the Community Broadband Bits Podcast, continuing our discussion about the potential for wireless technologies to improve how we access the Internet. We recommend listening to his first appearance in episode 18 before this one.
Here, we take up the old wired vs. wireless debate, but quickly determine that such a framing is useless. Wires and radios are actually complementary, not substitutes.
Community Broadband Bits 24 - Dr Browder of Bristol, Tennessee
Dr Browder runs Bristol Tennessee Essential Services, the municipal utility on the southern side of Bristol's Virginia border. For our 24th Community Broadband Bits podcast, he tells us how they built a FTTH network and how it has helped the community.
Like so many others, they started by seeking to ensure maximum reliability of the electrical grid. Now they offer telephone, television, and Internet access to the whole community.
Community Broadband Bits 23 - Harold Feld from Public Knowledge
One hundred years after Teddy Roosevelt and AT&T agreed to the Kingsbury Commitment, Harold Feld joins us on Community Broadband Bits podcast to explain what the Kingsbury Commitment was and why it matters. In short, AT&T wants to change the way telecommunications networks are regulated and Harold is one of our best allies on this subject.
AT&T is leaning on the FCC and passing laws in state after state that deregulate telecommunications. Whether we want to deal with it or not, these policies are being discussed and consumer protections thus far have taken a beating.
Community Broadband Bits 22 - Jason Grey from Danville, Virginia
While I was in Danville, Virginia, for the Broadband Community Magazine Economic Development Conference, I had a chance to sit down with Jason Grey, nDanville Network Manager. This interview is our 22nd episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.
Jason and I met five years ago when I first visited Danville to learn about its municipal open access fiber-optic network. Danville is located in southern Virginia and was hit hard by the demise of tobacco and the loss of manufacturing jobs.