Longmont Power and Communications, a city-owned utility north of Denver in Colorado, is slowly rolling out a FTTH network to local businesses and residents that are in close proximity to its existing fiber loop. They are offering a symmetrical gigabit of Internet access for just $50/month. Download this comic as a pdf. Sign up for our one-email-per-week newsletter with ongoing coverage of community owned networks. The local newspaper notes that some local businesses have already signed on, including a clinic:

Jurey said the city's network is three times faster than the speeds the clinic got before at a cost savings of $1,600 a month.

On November 5, citizens will decide a referendum on whether to expedite the building by issuing revenue bonds without increasing local taxes. A brochure explaining pro and con is available here [pdf]. Approving the bonds means building the network to everyone in a few years while not approving it will mean building the network over several decades. We recently did a podcast with Longmont Power and Communications Broadband Services Manager Vince Jordan and a local citizen campaigning for the referendum. Listen to that show here. Read the rest of our coverage about Longmont here.

Another great video from Australia makes many salient points regarding the debate over their national broadband network. One key point to take away is that it is possible to talk to non-technical normal people about this subject without overwhelming them or boring them.

Another is that FTTN = fiber to the nowhere, not fiber to the node.  

When it comes to building infrastructure, we should make smart long term investments. That said, we are strongly supportive of locally owned, fiber networks. Local ownership trumps national ownership because proximity lends itself to accountability.

The Internet Must Go is a fun look at a serious topic: how big cable and telephone companies are trying to make us pay more for less access to the Internet. Please watch and share!

Due to the many exciting developments in the U.S., we rarely have time to peek at interesting projects overseas, but Australia is experiencing a political fight over its ambitious open access network. The opposition party wants to cut the costs of the project by transforming it from a FTTH network to a FTTN project - Fiber-to-the-node (or as I like to say, fiber-to-the-nowhere as it does nothing to address the largest bottleneck). Thanks to Benoit Felten, we have been alerted to a "fabled Australian comic duo" sending up the opposition plan. Clarke and Dawe:

This video is really making the rounds - I have seen it on multiple lists and many have forwarded it to me. I found it hilarous, but be warned that it features salty language that may be offensive to some and is probably NSFW.

We continue tracking the progress of Georgia's HB 282, a bill to limit investment in Internet networks. The bill basically says that if some people in a community have access to 3 Mbps (moderately slow DSL) connections, the community cannot invest in its own advanced networks - even to connect just local businesses that would spur job growth. This bill could be discussed on the Georgia House Floor any day. If it passes there, the Senate will take it up. However, even if we can kill it this year, we can expect to see the big companies raise it again next year. It got us to wondering how anyone could consider this a good idea ... Feel free to share this comic, but link back to this page where possible. This link makes it easy to Share or Like on Facebook. Read all of our coverage of this bill using this tag: HB 282 2013 If you want to stay up to date on these issues more generally, sign up for our one-email-per-week list of recent stories about community owned networks. We previously created a comic about the Comcast astroturf campaign in Longmont, Colorado. Feel free to share this video below with those who may not be aware why some communities have decided to build their own networks.

LUS Fiber has released a new ad promoting its HDTV services - probably the best ad I have seen from a community broadband network promoting its services.

In a nod to Thanksgiving, Government Technology has collected 11 "Tech Turkeys - "Half-baked lowlights from the year gone by" (2011). North Carolina made the list at Number 9 after its Time Warner Cable-sponsored Legislature decided to effectively outlaw community fiber networks. This might not have been as big a deal if those communities were not the only entities in the state actually investing in next-generation broadband. Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink prefer to "save the best for last" when it comes to investing in the state. The stated reason for revoking local decision-making power from communities? It wasn't fair for Time Warner Cable to compete against cities like Salisbury. We looked deeper into that claim and found it wanting, as illustrated below in an infographic and video:

Shortly after Longmont voters chose self-reliance despite Comcast's $300,000 campaign of lies to sway the referendum, some anonymous citizen placed the following ad in the local paper.  Cheeky.

Where would be without humor?  I just hope Time Warner Cable isn't inspired to add more bogus charges to their bills following this article.  A sample:

$17.23 — Basic service $37.35 — Standard service $40.81 — Actual service $12.50 — Federal taxes $11.75 — Federal taxes, part two $6.85 — New York City taxes $5.35 — Fort Wayne, Indiana, city taxes $3.45 — Singapore Nuclear Defense Fund $16.30 — Twenty-five-per-cent gratuity $13.99 — DVR (disabled video recorder) ...