News

WUNC, a public radio station out of Chapel Hill in North Carolina, covered community owned networks and broadband availability on its recent "State of Things" midday program.

Earlier this month we alerted you to Alex Marshall's upcoming appearance at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. We want to remind all of you "policy wonks, economists and planners of all types" that the event is quickly approaching.

The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network (ECFiber) continues to grow, tripling in size in just the past year. We reported last summer that the community owned network had raised the funding for an expansion.

We have followed happenings in Opelika, Alabama, for three years as the community investigated the benefits of a fiber network.

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.  

During the summer, I spent two days in Glasgow, Kentucky, to learn about the first municipal broadband network in the country. I believe it also became the first community in the US to have broadband access available universally within the town.

This is an older column, but the introduction is so dead-on, I wanted to draw more attention to it:

This is Part 2 in a two-part series discussing comments submitted to the FCC in response to a petition filed by Fiber-To-The-Home Council proposing a new Gigabit Community Race to the Top program.

The publicly owned rights-of-way (ROW or PROW), are a misunderstood resource in many communities. Local governments manage them on behalf of the public, but are under pressure as very large, very profitable cable and telephone companies seek to prevent local governments from charging rent to those using the PROW.

Kevin Litten, of the Baltimore Business Journal has published a good discussion of why Baltimore is considering a public investment to expand the City's fiber network.

“The Internet has become an important as having electricity and water,” said Cole, an

Anyone looking for a short introduction to community owned networks should start with this brief animated video. Please share it around - embed in Facebook, blogs, whatever. We have this and other informative videos archived here.

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) will present a webcast via BroadbandUS.TV tomorrow, October 1. The event focuses on broadband in schools and libraries. The webcast, titled The Importance of High-Capacity Bandwidth for Schools and Libraries runs from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET. 

This is Part 1 in a two-part series discussing comments submitted to the FCC in response to a petition filed by Fiber-To-The-Home Council proposing a new Gigabit Community Race to the Top program.

Google knows how to differentiate its gigabit Internet access from the slower options offered by cable and DSL. Community networks should take notes on effective advertising. 

When Indianola decided to invest in a municipal fiber network, the decision was part of a larger economic development plan that included a startup incubator in partnership with Simpson College - which we wrote about earlier this year.