The show was published over a year ago, but it holds up as a good explanation for both network neutrality and the danger of Comcast and other massive cable companies becoming too powerful. The popular podcast 99% Invisible interviewed Susan Crawford on the subject last November. It is worth listening to and keeping as a reference for those who do not understand the threat. That said, I think the show oversimplifies the dynamic of high speed access -- the big phone companies are not totally irrelevant, just mostly irrelevant when it comes to delivering faster, more reliable services. And this is not technological determinism so much as poor management choices and the pressure Wall Street puts on firms to harvest profits rather than investing for the future.

Community Broadband Networks have a very good track record in creating jobs, and we have just released a fact sheet [pdf] that collects some exciting success stories -- where a publicly owned network attracted new businesses or helped existing businesses to thrive. Though the telecommunications needs of local businesses have swelled dramatically in recent years, the DSL and cable networks have not been able to keep up. Businesses are often stuck between a connection that does not meet their needs and a connection they cannot afford -- but local, publicly owned networks have stepped in to provide the ultra-fast, super reliable services at affordable prices. This fact sheet discusses the jobs that were enabled by public investments in Chanute, Kansas; Chattanooga and Tullahoma, Tennessee; Lafayette, Louisiana; Bristol, Martinsville, and Danville, Virginia; and Springfield, Missouri. This should be a great resource for those educating their community about the importance of having a network that is directly accountable to the community. Hand it out, include it in conference materials, email it to legislators, whatever. We are developing additional fact sheets, but are always interested in what would be most helpful to you, so don't be afraid to tell us.

We sometimes fail to communicate the great lengths to which big cable and telecommunications companies will go to intimidate and scare voters into opposing a community broadband projects. They have deployed a variety of dirty tricks and we have done a poor job of cataloging them. But a recent phone call with John St. Julien in Lafayette, Louisiana, reminded me of a push poll that an alert citizen recorded back when Cox, Bellsouth (now AT&T), and/or other opponents of the municipal broadband project commissioned a "push poll" to scare voters into opposing a referendum on whether the City should build its own network. We tell the full story about this campaign in our Broadband at the Speed of Light report. But in anticipation of our interview with John St Julien tomorrow, we thought we should make sure our readers/listeners had a chance to hear this 30 minute call. In it, a pollster is asking a series of questions commissioned by opponents to the community broadband network and responding to it. The audio is sometimes hard to make out, but well worth it as the person recording it has some pretty funny responses to some of the questions being posed. This is just one of the reasons that referenda are a poor tool for measuring community support of a project. While the big companies can dump unlimited funds into their self-interested "vote no" campaigns, the city itself cannot encourage voters to go one way or another. And local groups supporting a community broadband network have far fewer resources. For instance, when Longmont, Colorado, had its first referendum, Comcast blitzed the community with something like $250,000 in ads and misinformation (setting a local record for expenditures) -- resulting in a pretty significant majority for the "nay" voters. After citizens realized they'd been had, they clamored for another vote. Two years later, Comcast dropped $400,000 on Longmont but the grassroots successfully out-organized the cash-dump. If you want to know more about how your community can win a fight like this, read more about Lafayette and listen to our conversation with John St. Julien tomorrow (the first of several). Here is the push poll and response.

Wired West, an initiative in rural western Massachusetts to build a modern network in a broadband desert, has launched a pre-subscription campaign to demonstrate local demand for broadband service and support for the project. The online form is available here. The official WiredWest Communications Cooperative Corporation is just now celebrating its first anniversary, noting that 37 towns have officially joined it. Back in June, we talked with Linda Kramer, who explained how Sibley County in rural Minnesota used a pre-subscription campaign to document the massive local support for their initiative. Google is using a similar strategy in Kansas City to identify which neighborhoods are most interested in services. Wired West also recently issued an RFP for network design:

WiredWest has issued a Request for Proposal for high level network design and cost estimates for the WiredWest fiber-to-the-premise network. The results will be used as the basis for WiredWest’s pro-forma and financing. “The work generated by this RFP will provide critical information to take the project to the next step,” said Monica Webb, Chair of WiredWest, “which is imperative, as the digital divide afflicting our region continues to hinder our economic development, educational opportunities and quality of life.”

And that RFP has been issued to Matrix Design Group:

After extensive review and due diligence, Wired West chose the Matrix Design Group of East Hanover, NJ, to complete the contract. They have designed and built fiber networks extensively in the Northeast, including Massachusetts, completing projects for private and public sector interests, in urban, suburban and rural areas. The work by Matrix is scheduled to be completed in early October, and will be used in WiredWest’s business plan and for financing.

Several volunteers have put a tremendous amount of effort into this initiative, recognizing that if they don't act, no one will. This is an inspiring project.

In the excitement around Google's unveiling of the $70 gigabit broadband connection in Kansas City, some may be wondering how it is that Google can offer a gigabit for moderately more than what most of us pay for far slower cable broadband connections. On one side of the equation is the fact that big cable companies (Time Warner Cable, Comcast, etc.) have long been ripping off consumers by pricing their services far above cost -- something they can easily do because they face so little competition. But the more interesting side of the equation is how Google can make its gigabit price so low. Recall that Chattanooga made major waves with its gigabit service, priced then at the rock-bottom rate of $350/month. A gigabit is not available in many communities and where it is available, the price is often over $10,000 per month. We published an in-depth case study of their approach a few months ago. But, as Milo Medin -- the head of the Google Fiber project -- is fond of saying, "No one moves bits cheaper than Google." Google has built an incredible worldwide fiber optic network. Let's call this lessons 1 and 2.

Lesson 1: Google built its own network. It isn't leasing connections or services from big telecommunications companies. Building your own network gives you more control -- both of technology and pricing. Lesson 2: Google uses fiber-optics. These connections are reliable and have the highest capacity of any communications medium. The homes in Kansas City are connected via fiber whereas Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and others continue to rely on last-generation technologies because they are delaying investment in modern technology to boost their profits.

Others have already followed these lessons but are not able to offer their gig for such a low prices. To understand why, let's start with some basics. I'm hypothetically starting Anytown Fiber Net in my neighborhood and I want to offer a gig.

In an unsurprising result, voters in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, chose not to build their own FTTH network. The margin was 58% against, 42% for. According to that article, the opponents (bankrolled largely by national cable company Cox) outspent proponents by 3:1. We previously covered this plan and were concerned that the number one reason identified for proposing the network was to diversify revenue for the local government. Quite frankly, that is a poor reason to go head to head against massive companies like Cox and CenturyLink. The biggest benefits of community networks tend to be the hard to quantify -- aggregate savings to the community from lower prices from all providers in a competitive environment, increased economic development, better customer service from a local provider, etc. These networks are built to be financially self-sufficient, but we caution against expecting them to be a piggy bank for the local government. Unlike the successful Longmont approach, where those advocating for the community network engaged others who had been through similar fights elsewhere, it seemed like Siloam Springs preferred not to ask for help. Meanwhile, Cox tapped its nationwide resources to oppose the network, with misinformation like this: Download the full size flyer here. Communities that want to build community networks should engage the wider community of community broadband supporters and be prepared for flyers like this one. And when seeking local support, make sure you find messages that resonate. Make sure you read about the grassroots movement in Lafayette in our recent report or how Chattanooga had hundreds of community meetings to explain its plan. These networks face stiff opposition from entrenched opponents that want to be the sole gatekeepers to the Internet -- ensuring a real choice means doing real organizing.

The Open Technology Initiative's Dispatches from the Digital Frontier blog originally published this story by Preston Rhea about his experience working with some neighbors to build their own wireless network in Mount Pleasant in Washington, DC. We hope it inspires others.

If you are not yet familiar with Mount Pleasant, here’s a chance to learn about one of DC’s most vibrant neighborhoods. It’s a diverse area not far from downtown DC, featuring a main street lined with locally-owned businesses. Many of these shops and restaurants are owned and run by the area’s large Latino community, which has long been central to shaping the neighborhood’s character. However, over the past decade rising housing prices have pushed many in the Latino community east towards Georgia Avenue.

In May, I moved to Mount Pleasant and started to learn about the area. In order to encourage community-building and local empowerment and to increase local information-sharing and opportunities for civic engagement, I decided to use skills and ideas garnered from my work at the Open Technology Initiative to organize a community wireless network. Despite my excitement to get started, I didn’t want to rush in without first connecting with the people, the histories, networks, skill sets, and local knowledge already present in the community.

My first step was technical: with the help of my OTI colleagues, I specified the hardware for the network and prepared the technology for installation. The first-stage plan was to install a few “nodes” (wireless access points) in order to establish the form and structure of the mesh network - open, interoperable, unfiltered, and decentralized. Then, at the Mount Pleasant Farmers Market, I handed out fliers directing people to an online survey gauging their interest in organizing a community wireless network in the neighborhood. I also posted a few of the fliers in local businesses on Mount Pleasant Street. But I needed to go deeper in order to really connect with the existing social networks of people and projects.

After AT&T began pushing a bill in Georgia to revoke local authority to decide to build a publicly owned broadband network, the Georgia Municipal Assocation (GMA) and the SouthEast Assocation of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors began reaching out to Georgia's legislators to explain how the private sector has left serious gaps in broadband coverage, which stopped the bill. Below are two flyers they report being particularly helpful. GMA, SEATOA, and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance are among the vast majority that believe communities should decide locally if a community network makes sense to bring next-generation connections to local businesses and residents. Georgia is a conservative state and AT&T had enlisted the support of the Senate Majority Leader in pushing their anti-competition broadband bill. Unfortunately for AT&T, their CEO was too candid on calls with Wall Street, contradicting AT&T's lobbyist talking points in Georgia. Note, that AT&T was originally trying to define broadband at the absurd 200kbps level but a substitute bill would have bumped it up to a still-too-low 768kbps, which is referenced above. The other flyer that apparently made a difference with legislators is here: Rememeber that elected officials often think of broadband in binary terms. You have it or you don't. In their mind, if you have options aside from dial-up, the problem is solved. These are people that often do not know what is needed to attract economic development, work efficiently from home, or successfully compete remote education courses.

Local governments are often looking for low-risk options for expanding broadband access to residents and local businesses. There are not many. Seattle put some extra conduit in the ground as a part of a different project that was tearing up the streets but Comcast was the only provider interested. The problem with a haphazard program of putting conduit in the ground is that while it benefits existing providers, it does very little to help new entrants. And conduit is inherently limited -- only a few providers can benefit from it and when used up, there is no space for more providers. In short, more conduit may slightly improve the status quo but it does little to get us to a future where residents and local businesses have a variety of choices from service providers offering fast, reliable, and affordable access to the Internet. Smart conduit policy can lay the groundwork for lowering the cost of a community network, which can get us where we want to be. It may take time, but will create benefits far more rapidly than private providers will be building next-generation networks in most of our communities. John Brown, a friend from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has offered some tips for communities that want to develop smart conduit policies. Brown runs CityLink Telecommunications, an impressive privately owned, open access, FTTH network that connects residents, businesses, schools, muni buildings, etc. We tend not to support privately owned networks because for all the great work a companiy like CityLink Fiber does, one does not know who will own it in 5, 10, or 20 years. However, we recognize that CityLink Fiber is a far better partner for communities than the vast majority of companies in this space. The following comments are taken from an email he shared with me and is permitting me to republish. Direct quotes are indented and the rest is paraphrased. Not all conduit is created equal. A 2 inch pipe will be sufficient for perhaps 2 providers. If conduit does not have inter-duct, it is much harder for multiple providers to share it. Inter-duct creates channels within the conduit that allows a provider to pull its fiber cables through without disturbing other cables in the conduit.