Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
In November, the Broadband Alliance of Mendocino County (BAMC) released a report documenting the results of an online survey to determine the effects of a summer communications outage.
This was a big year for local governments and many year-end discussions have noted the role of cities in expanding high quality Internet access. Among them, The Free Press' Timothy Karr:
Entrepreneurs in Chattanooga now have a new space where they can try to answer the question, "What does one do with a gig?" The Chattanooga Public Library officially opened its GigLab in November.
Erwin, Tennessee announced last summer that it was planning an FTTH pilot project to connect 1,200 customers.
In South Bend, the Trinity School at Green Lawn recently connected to the Metronet Zing dark fiber network thanks to a grant from Metronet and nCloud.
The Tullahoma Utilities Board (TUB) began offering gigabit service in 2013 through its municipal FTTH network, LightTUBe.
The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) will allow the city of Chanute move forward with its plan to serve residents and local businesses with its municipal network reports the Wichita Eagle.
Indianola Municipal Utilities (IMU) announced in a December 1st press release that they will be offering gigabit service in 2015. IMU will also be expanding their FTTH network to an additional 150 premises this winter in the central part of Indianola.
This week in Community Broadband networks... partnerships, cooperatives, and going-it-alone. For a background in muni networks, check out this recent article from FiscalNote. The article highlights Kansas and Utah's fight for improving beyond the minimum speeds.
Last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report warning of the possibility and potential consequences of ISPs instituting data caps in their fixed line plans.
Even guys who don't support Title II handling of the Internet support local authority. Even if those guys are cigar smokin', basketball-team buyin', swimmin'-with-the-shark type guys.
Award-winning supercomputing apps, medical research, economic development, and quantum computing advances. What do they all have in common? They all depend on the DubLINK network running underneath Dublin, Ohio, a suburb on the Northwest edge of Columbus.
Muscatine Power & Water (MP&W) announced in late November that it will upgrade its municipal hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) communications network to an FTTH network. The upgrade will allow Muscatine to offer gigabit speeds. Construction is set to begin in 2016; the FTTH network is scheduled to go live in 2017.
In November, Burlington's City Council approved the much anticipated settlement with Citibank. Burlington Telecom, a nearly citywide gigabit FTTH network owned by the city, was run into the ground by a previous mayor. That Mayor's Administration hid major cost overruns from the public for years, resulting in a challenging situation for the community.
Our friends at the Blandin Foundation recently sponsored another Minnesota Border to Border Broadband conference.
After successfully fighting a Kansas state law proposed in February that would have outlawed community networks entirely, the city of Chanute is being required to follow an outdated 1940s law that requires them to ask permission to move forward with a bond initiative that would fund a high speed Internet network to businesses and residents.
As days go by, an increasing number of organizations, companies, and individuals go on record opposing the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger. The DOJ has already spent significant time analyzing the proposal and the FCC has been taking comments for months.
Video of "Maximizing Fibre Infrastructure Investment in Europe" is now archived and ready to view. Our own Christopher Mitchell presented as part of this afternoon seminar on telecommunications policy.
If your community is hungry for better connectivity, you may be interested in starting a community network initiative. Getting started can be a daunting task so we developed the Community Connectivity Toolkit.
Last month, we held our first "Ask Us Anything: An Open Talk on Muni Networks" event for people interested in learning more about municipal networks. We were pleased by the turn out and by the quality of questions participants threw our way. We will hold our second "Ask Us Anything" event on December 17th at 2:00 p.m. CST.
