Community Broadband Bits Podcast

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by senior staff on the broadband initiative to dig into recent topics, including Senior Reporter, Editor and Communications Team Lead Sean Gonsalves, Community Broadband Outreach Team Lead DeAnne Cuellar, and Senior Researcher and Research Team Lead Ry Marcattilio-McCracken.

This week on the podcast Christopher is joined by Ken Demlow, Planning Services Group Manager with HR Green, a leading employee-owned civil engineering and technical management firm with offices in nine states.The pair dive into the world of consulting firms and how they help cities and towns across the United States figure out how to build and design local infrastructure, which includes the building of local broadband networks.

This week on the podcast, while attending the 2022 Broadband Communities Summit in Houston earlier this month, Christopher was joined by Angie Kronenberg, Chief Advocate and General Counsel for INCOMPAS, a leading trade association advocating on behalf of telecommunication policies that encourage competition. The pair kick-off the podcast with a fun nod to Angie’s involvement on a “speed dating” panel where the concept of “overbuilding” (industry-speak for competition) was a hot topic of discussion.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by John Lester, General Manager of Clarksville Connected. The two discuss how Clarksville, a small rural community of about 10,000 in northwest Arkansas at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, became the Natural State’s first 2 gig city.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Benoit Felton (Independent Consultant, Diffraction Analysis). During the conversation, the two discuss the transformational potential of broadband,  international developments in fiber deployment and lessons on wholesale broadband networks.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined live from Broadband Communities by Bob Knight (CEO, Harrison Edwards) and Kim McKinley (Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber). During the conversation, the three discuss the newly announced American Association of Public Broadband (AAPB). They talk about what the group is, why it’s needed and how people can get involved.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jeff Gavlinski, CEO of Mountain Connect to preview this year’s event. During the conversation, the two talk about what makes Mountain Connect different from other broadband conferences, what’s on deck for this year, and Jeff’s perspective on larger trends in the broadband industry. They also discuss some of the political realities of the current moment in broadband, and asses the state of various projects going on around the country.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Shayna Englin, Director of the Digital Equity Initiative at the California Community Foundation. During the conversation, the two talk about Shayna’s work with the Digital Equity Initiative, how their coalition brought about recent wins for community broadband in LA County, and what’s next in the fight to build a community-owned fiber network there.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by three colleagues from the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at ILSR including Sean Gonsalves (Communications Team Lead), Ry Marcattilio-McCracken (Research Team Lead) and DeAnne Cuellar (Outreach Team Lead). During the conversation, the four talk about Sean’s writing that highlights improvements to New York’s new budget bill, and how it sets the table for municipal broadband in the Empire State. The group also discusses Ry’s work detailing Comcast’s recent expansion of its stock buyback program. DeAnne joins the conversation to talk through problems with the federal government’s decision to tax broadband grant money.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Margaret Kaufer, President of the New York-based STEM Alliance, and Bob Cacase, Commissioner of Information Technology for the City of Yonkers. During the conversation, the three talk about Y-ZONE, a partnership between several community groups working to connect households in Yonkers. They discuss origins of the partnership, performance of the CBRS technology the network relies on, and some technical details of their particular build. They also get into the nitty gritty of real world costs associated with building CBRS networks, and how they overcome obstacles they have faced regarding adoption by the community.