News

Customers of Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU), in Iowa, have recently been treated to an increase in fiber Internet service speeds with no increase in price.

We received a visit in the Institute for Local Self-Reliance offices last week from Bill Lindeke from streets.mn. Bill came to interview our own Christopher Mitchell so he could learn more about our work at ILSR. The two talked about Chris' favorite topic. In Bills' words:

We enjoy bringing you news from western rural Massachusetts and the WiredWest Cooperative. We want to share the update on 2012 activities and some of the plans for 2013.

The UC2B project broke ground in the fall of 2011 and is a joint effort by the cities of Urbana and Champaign and the University of Illinois.

In the week before Christmas, Mother Nature sent a powerful winter storm to Chelan County in Washington. Hundreds of trees along the south shore of Lake Wenatchee came down, causing extensive electrical and fiber outages. According to the Chelan PUD, most electrical customers have had power restored, but Internet, phone, and TV services dependent on the fiber are still out.

Franklin, Kentucky expects to see more positive economic growth when it launches its new fiber optic network.

This March 21-22, the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA) will be hosting the "Networking Communities for the New South" conference. The conference will be held at the Omni Charlotte Hotel.

We want to thank Ann Treacy from the Blandin Foundation for getting out and reporting on many events dealing with telecommunications. We know we can rely on her to faithfully share her findings via the Bladin on Broadband blog.

Readers know we have offered extensive coverage of the publicly owned network in Longmont, Colorado. The utility will soon offer telecommunications services to businesses and residents that are physically located within 500 feet or less of its existing network.

This post comes to us from Patrick Lucey of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation. The post was originally published there, but we are excited to feature it here as well.

“The electric co-ops represent possibly the greatest potential for expansion of really good infrastructure in rural America,” [Todd] Pealock said, explaining how it’s a natural fit for co-ops to be infrastructure providers.

“It’s very synergistic for our linemen to hang cable, to lift the hardware up,” Pealock said. “The splicing is very natural for them.”

Six minute interview from Susan talking about the failure of policy in America to expand access to fast, affordable, and reliable networks.

“We want to grow our own new businesses in Indianola, and Simpson College is home to an entire group of potential entrepreneurs who we hope will find support for their efforts here and some day choose to locate their businesses here,” [Jerry Kelly, former Indianola mayor and executive director of the city's development association] said.

And so each of the last two years, we have had modest increases in the cost of the broadband service, and yet we've had tremendous sales. We're 33%, 31% penetrated. We hope someday all of America has broadband.

If you are a 21st century crafter, you are probably prolific at finding inspiration online. You may be familiar with American Crafts of Orem for ideas or products. The company, founded in 1994, is now a customer of UTOPIA and reports significant bandwidth improvement after the switch from old T-1 connections. From the UTPOIA blog: