News

The day before the FCC's Chairman decided that AT&T and Comcast should have greater powers as gatekeepers to the Internet, Marketplace Tech Report published an interview with Tim Wu. Tim Wu discusses the history of net neutrality and its importance.

Brilliant!

The Comcast/NBCU merger poses a real threat to the future of innovation, competition, and the open Internet. Put simply: size matters.

Today, the FCC is poised to pass a half-ass attempt to preserve the open Internet against the interests of massive gatekeepers like AT&T and Comcast.

There is so much to say about Burlington Telecom and its struggles that it cannot be covered in a single post. This is one of several posts that will discuss pieces of the situation.

While the bad news about Burlington Telecom (BT) has traveled far and wide, it has been marked with errors, misinformation, and inaccurate comparisons to other projects. MuniNetworks.org will weigh in on this issue with a series of posts to explain what happened, what did not happen, and what lessons we can learn from it.

On TelecomTV, Sean McLaughlin discusses their local efforts to improve broadband access and the impediments they face from big national carriers.

Fred Pilot, founder of the Camino Fiber Network Cooperative, recently wrote about the importance of community ownership in California's oldest newspaper.

Vermont's Department of Public Service has released its audit of Burlington Telecom. The audit is highly flawed and a disappointment in terms of actually illuminating what went wrong with Burlington.

Jim Baller offers a good national overview of community broadband networks in a 7 minute interview on TelecomTV.

E-NC has released the map they built with the stimulus mapping grant.

Michael Crowell, Fibrant's Director of Broadband Services, discusses the motivation behind their community fiber network (Fibrant), as well as some of the technology behind their GPON network. This is one of several similar interviews from TelecomTV.

Whenever the discussion of Network Neutrality comes up, we like to remind everyone that when the network is locally owned and accountable to the community, anti-subscriber discrimination is not a problem. That said, we are strong supporters of proper safeguards to ensure massive companies like AT&T cannot abuse their market power and discourage innovation.

In another TelecomTV segment, Jay Ovittore speaks with Guy Daniels discussing Communities United for Broadband. This video is no longer available. <

Another community in Florida is considering a community broadband network as a solution to its need for faster, more reliable broadband than incumbents offer.

As part of our continuing effort to shed light on the tendency of privately owned telcos and cablecos to consolidate rather than compete, we would like to note comments from Qwest's Chief Financial Officer.

This is a good 5 minute interview discussing what Wilson has done to build the first citywide FTTH network in North Carolina.

BVU, which operates OptiNet (the nation's first triple-play muni FTTH network), has transitioned from being owned by the City to being an independent authority. In its last fiscal year (2010-11), the public power utility finished with net income. OptiNet finished ahead of projections.

The AP says Burlington Telecom may be a cautionary tale for cities around the the country that contemplate building their own networks.

Chattanooga's Times Free Press explained how locals are using the nation's fastest broadband network.