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netBlazr Offering Blazing Fast Fixed Wireless - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 245
Like other urban centers in the U.S., Boston is filled with multi dwelling units (MDUs) and buildings that house multiple business tenants. Obtaining high-quality connectivity in such an environment can be a challenge, especially if choices are limited to just one or two incumbents with little or no competition. With the advancement of new fixed wireless technologies in recent years, however, residential and business subscribers now have better options.
This week, Christopher talks with Brough Turner, the founder and Chief Technology Officer at netBlazr. The company provides high-quality fixed wireless Internet access to residents and businesses across the city. Listeners who enjoy our occasional deep dives into the technical side of wireless connectivity, you’re in for a treat.
Brough and Christopher also discuss the company and the challenges they face working in a market traditionally reserved for the big incumbents. The guys spend time discussing the future of wireless and what Brough, who has extensive experience in this field, expects to see both in the short and long term.
This show is 35 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.
Thanks to Break the Bans for the music. The song is Escape and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
OK, Just What Does Open Access Mean Anymore?
In our experience, just about every community considering building a community network considers open access. They want to enable new choices for services and often would prefer the local government avoid directly competing with existing service providers, for a variety of reasons. However, we are only tracking 30 open access networks on our just-released Open Access resource page.
Many of the communities that start off enthusiastic about open access ultimately decide to have a single service provider (themselves or a contractor) to have more certainty over the revenues needed to pay operating expenses and debt. We believe this will change as the technology matures and more communities embrace software-defined networks (SDN) -- but before tackling that topic, we think it is important to discuss the meaning of open access.
On a regular basis, I get an email from one deep-thinking person or another that says, "That network isn't really open access." They almost always make good points. The problem is that different people embrace open access for different reasons - they often have different expectations of outcomes. Understanding that is key to evaluating open access.
How Many ISPs?
One of the key questions centers on how many providers a household is likely to be able to choose from. Various factors, including the network architecture and economics of becoming a service provider, will influence this outcome.
Some communities simply seek to avoid a monopoly network - they are focused on the idea of potential competition. For instance, we believe Huntsville's model and agreement with Google can be considered open access because any party could lease fiber from the utility to compete with Google. However, we believe the costs of doing so by using that network architecture make robust competition unlikely.
Open Access Engineering Options - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 172
The holy grail of Internet access for many of us continues to be a situation in which multiple providers can compete on a level playing field, which should lower costs to subscribers and encourage innovation. Often called open access, this may involve a municipality building a fiber optic network and making it available on a wholesale level - a model that has been tried to various degrees of success.
This week, we talk with Tim Pozar, a long time Internet entrepreneur and community network enthusiast, about why he supports that model and his ideal method of engineering such a network. We talk about different possibilities for how to design the network and trade-offs involved with those choices. Tim has worked for many years to encourage this model in San Francisco, which already has some of the locally rooted ISPs that we would hope would ultimately thrive if the City had that type of network available.
This show is 30 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.
Thanks to bkfm-b-side for the music, licensed using Creative Commons. The song is "Raise Your Hands."