News

The American Cable Association has profiled Tacoma's Click! network. Click! is an HFC network owned by the city, via the public power utility. Tacoma Power only offers one retail service: cable television.

Bristol Virginia is again expanding broadband access in rural Virginia. Following a $22.7 million BTOP (broadband stimulus) grant and matching $5.7 million grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission, in combination with in-kind contributions from the Virginia Department of Transportation, BVU will greatly expand middle-mile broadband throughout 8 counties in Southwest Virginia.

In January 2001, or about 1 million years ago in tech time, Site Selection Online published "Wired Cities: Working-Class Communities Build Next Frontier of High-Speed Connectivity". I found it years ago when reading up on the Click!

Success! After a few nerve-wracking months, North Carolina's state government has decided not to preempt local communities from building the broadband infrastructure they need.

The end of June brought an end to an initial phase of the Wired West campaign for real broadband in rural Massachusetts. When we previously looked in on the Wired West efforts, they had 39 towns supporting the idea.

The May/June issue of Broadband Properties has a number of articles about muni broadband networks, including one in Canada - Bruce Telecom.

What do you do when the media gets key facts about your community network wrong? Set the record straight! This blog post from the Public Affairs Manager in the city of Wilson, North Carolina, demonstrates a good response to errors in an article.

While researching the Wired West Network in rural Massachusetts, I learned about another community broadband network. The little town of Warwick built a wireless network for itself; the story behind it gives a glimpse into the ways that the federal approach to broadband really fails small communities.

Bruce Kushnick, a telecom analyst, has long pushed for telcos to live up to the bargains they struck with individual states and federal agencies over the years as part of deregulation policies. They were deregulated and (surprisingly enough) failed to make good on their promises.

Wilson has won two awards for communications due to its efforts on the Save North Carolina Broadband Blog. The city of Wilson's public power utility built a citywide FTTH network called Greenlight.

In an editorial about the LUS Fiber lawsuit against NCTC, the local Lafayette paper made the following observation:

We've had our own reservations about LUS Fiber to the Home, base

The private sector is not going to expand broadband to everyone.

Cedar Falls, Iowa, is the latest of a number of publicly owned cable networks that are upgrading to FTTH. Cedar Falls has been planning this for some time, squirreling away net income over the years as it ran surpluses to help afford the costly upgrade.

Some 10,000 households and businesses in rural Kentucky will soon have FTTH as Russellville and Barbourville have decided to make this long term investment to ensure their communities can take advantage of modern technology and communications. This

Though we certainly support the FCC's reclassification of broadband to ensure companies like Comcast do not interfere with the open Internet, we focus on policy at the community level. We fully support the efforts of organizations and people in DC to work at the federal level.

Powell, a small community in Wyoming, has bought its own network from the investors who financed it [Powell Tribune], eighteen years ahead of schedule.

While most of the information on this site is about broadband networks at a citywide level, there are a variety of groups that are working to supply broadband at the neighborhood level (often in large metro areas).

Sibley County plans to pay for half of a feasibility study (matching funds to be provided by Blandin Foundation) to examine FTTH possibility in this piece of rural Minnesota. It would connect cities, schools, and more, with services run by a cooperative.

A 2007 video from Chattanooga's Electric Power Board explaining the benefits of publicly owned fiber-optic infrastructure.