The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded a Knight Prototype Fund grant to the Civic Cloud Collaborative of Burlington, Vermont.

The Civic Cloud Collaborative is a group of eight organizations using Burlington's gigabit network to create civic and public spaces. The group describes the Civic Cloud project on their website:

The Civic Cloud will be available for the community to use as a platform for public, non-commercial Internet applications and digital creative works. Several applications will be deployed during an initial prototyping phase of the Civic Cloud. High-definition live streaming will be provided for community media outlets to webcast live public meetings and cultural events. WordPress websites will be hosted for several Vermont non-profits including rescue squads, food shelves, job banks and historical societies. A collection of volunteer-developed applications and a state-of-the-art website deployed to the Civic Cloud will help Big Heavy World preserve and promote Vermont-made music. Lakecraft, an educational, multi-user game aimed at youth and adults that gamifies the Lake Champlain Basin, will also be one of the first applications to run on the Civic Cloud.

Vermont Public Radio also reported on the award. From the article:

“We’re interested in it being a non-commercial space on the Internet,” said Bradley Holt, a Burlington-based developer who heads CodeForBTV, the local chapter of Code For America, an organization for public service software developers.

The cloud service, Holt said, will provide hosting capacity for local community organizations seeking to use the Internet to advance the public interest.

For more, check out the press release from Code for BTV, one of the collaborative members.

The latest addition to the growing list of gigabit communities is Reedsburg, Wisconsin. For residential customers, the service is available for $274.95/month when bundled or $299.95/month standalone. The network has long delivered gigabit services to local businesses but the residential offer is new.

In a recent press release the Reedsburg Utility Commission (RUC) announced it now offers gigabit service to business and residential customers. From the press release:

“More and more businesses and homes need a faster connection to consume and produce large amounts of data.  Our gigabit network will accommodate those needs well into the future,” said RUC General Manager Brett Schuppner. “Offering gigabit broadband services is very rare in this country and I am proud to be part of a community that is so technologically advanced.  RUC strives to reach new levels of innovation with our 100% fiber optic network serving Reedsburg, Loganville, Lake Delton, and surrounding rural communities.”

Reedsburg is located approximately 55 miles northwest of Madison and is home to 10,000 residents. Reedsburg began dabbling in fiber optic infrastructure in 1998 to connect electric substations and provide Internet service to several public schools. The RUC provides water, electricity, and triple-play to the community. Community leaders took advantage of opportunities over the years to extend the reach of its network, including a 2010 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) award to expand the FTTH network.

Residential customers of Co-Mo Connect in Missouri will see a free upgrade this spring. In a December announcement, the cooperative stated it will also begin offering gigabit Internet service for $99.95 per month.

“There are no strings attached,” said Randy Klindt, Co-Mo Comm's general manager. “We’re doing this because we can, because the network has the capacity and we received a good deal on bandwidth. We’re passing those speeds and savings onto our subscribers.”

New residential service options:

• 5 megabits per second for $39.95 a month; 
• 35 mbps (currently 20 mbps) for $49.95 a month; 
• 100 mbps (currently 50 mbps) for $59.95 a month;
• 1 gbps (currently 100mbps) for $99.95 a month.

According to the announcement, small businesses will also receive speed increases with no increase in price. Klindt notes that Co-Mo prides itself on gimmick-free pricing:

“Nothing is going to decrease after six months or whatever the other companies do,” he said. “And subscribers don’t have to do anything to get the extra speed. If you’re on the 20, 50 or 100 megabit tier right now, we’re simply going to turn up your speed when this becomes available sometime this coming spring.”

We reported on Co-Mo in 2012, as the cooperative began expansion of services. At the time, Co-Mo had been passed over for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding. Coop members wanted to improve the broadband situation for better economic opportunity so Co-Mo pressed on without federal funding. The plan to bring FTTH to all 25,000 coop members has four phases with completion scheduled for 2016.

In 1985, Auburn Electric became one of the first communities in the midwest to deploy fiber. At the time, the purpose was to improve electric and voice systems substation communications within the municipal utility. That investment laid the foundation for a municipal network that now encourages economic development and saves public dollars while enhancing services.

Auburn expanded its fiber network beyond electric systems in 1998. The utility began using the network to serve city and county government operations. It is not well known, but Auburn offered gigabit service to its public sector customers way back in 1998.

The benefits from the deployment prompted community leaders to develop an Information Technology Master Plan in 1998 that would answer the question of what other ways the fiber could serve the community? As part of the Master Plan, Auburn leaders collected information from other communities that were capitalizing on their own local fiber. While Auburn made no immediate plans, they kept an open mind, waiting until the time was right.

In 2004, Cooper Tire and Rubber (now Cooper Standard) was about to be sold from its parent company. The $1.6 billion auto component manufacturer needed a data center but bandwidth was insufficient and inconsistent in Auburn. Cooper considered leaving because the incumbents, Mediacom and AT&T, could not or would not provide the broadband capacity the company needed. If Cooper left town, an estimated $7 million in wages and benefits from 75 high-paying tech jobs would also leave. At the time, Auburn was home to 12,500 people.

According to Schweitzer, the City tried to persuade the telephone company to find a solution with Cooper but the two could not reach an agreement. Rather than lose Cooper, the City of Auburn stepped in to fill the connectivity gap in 2005.

In a 2007 interview with Public Power magazine, Schweitzer noted advantages in Auburn that facilitated the project:

The Wired Road, a community-owned open access network, provides affordable fiber connectivity in rural Virginia. The network recently upgraded and now offers Gigabit commercial service in the Blue Ridge Crossroads region. From the press release:

“America only has a few networks offering 1 Gigabit Broadband Services; it’s awesome that we have that technology here in our backyard,” Stated Scarlett McGrady with The Wired Road Authority. "Availability of technologies like this is vital for this area to grow," said McGrady.

The network still offers fiber and wireless services at basic speeds to private and business customers in Carroll and Grayson Counties. The Wired Road encourages competitive rates for the region with its open access model. Lingo Networks, 1Point Communications, and LSNet all offer Internet access to Wired Road customers. 

For more on The Wired Road story, listen to Christopher interview McGrady in Episode 31 of the Broadband Bits Podcast.

Congrats to the people and businesses in The Wired Road service area!