Community Broadband Media Roundup - September 23

California

Lakeport looks to increase broadband infrastructure by Zack Jordan, Record-Bee

Colorado

Colorado town offers 1 Gbps for $60 after years of battling Comcast by Karl Bode, TechDirt

Georgia

In rural Georgia, access to broadband worse than data showed, Times Free Press 

Massachusetts 

Easthampton explores pathways for municipal Internet by Michael Connors, Daily Hampshire Gazette 

Though it wasn’t brought up at the meeting, Peake said the cities of Holyoke, Westfield and Greenfield had all reached out to the committee, expressing interest in a partnership. In a partnership, the other city could essentially provide and maintain the utility through an expansion of existing services and take a percentage of the overall revenue.

New York

State hearing to look at rural access to broadband Internet by Ellen Abbott, WRVO 

Texas

The digital redlining of Dallas by Doug Dawson, POTs and PANs 

Washington

Nisqually Tribe gets $50,000 to study possible broadband network for Yelm, Roy and McKenna, Nisqually Valley News 

West Virginia

Better community broadband: County Commission applies for service extension grant by Greg Jordan, Bluefield Daily Telegraph

General

50% of US homes still won’t have fiber broadband by 2025, study says by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica

The US has many rural areas with low housing density, which helps explain the shortage of fiber coverage—it's more profitable to wire up densely populated cities where there are more potential customers. But fiber isn't universally deployed through big cities, either, as the industry report projects that 33.9 million households in densely populated urban and suburban areas still won't be covered by fiber in 2025.

Comcast promised not to raise prices—guess what happened next by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica

Telemedicine saves almost $4K per diabetic, CoBank tells FCC by Alison Diana, Broadband World News 

Evaluating Democrats' vow of 'Internet for All' by Oriana Schwindt, LightReading 

Education and the digital divide, Benton Institute for Broadband and Society 

DSL, the slowest technology, remains the one most available in rural by Roberto Gallardo and Brian Whitacre, The Daily Yonder

Tribal leaders, lawmakers chide FCC for lack of progress on broadband by Harrison Mantas, Cronkite News 

The GAO pointed out that tribes often rely on the “secondary market” where license holders will lease or resell sections of their lease to willing buyers. Sekaquaptewa noted that the spectrum license covering her community’s tribal land was being held by a speculator who had no interest in building infrastructure to help connect the tribe.