Harold Feld at Public Knowledge created another five minute video on broadband policy - embedded below - that I heartily recommend. This video fits in nicely with my recent posts discussing comments submitted to the FCC on the definition on broadband, and more recently, on why the definition matters. If you want to dig in deeper to Harold's comments, I recommend his blog. If you take one thing away, remember that broadband is not a simple market of sellers and buyers, it is an ecology - impacting everything from energy efficiency to education to entertainment ... and those are just some of the e's.
As promised a few weeks ago, Ellen Perlman has written a piece on the story behind the Lafayette, Louisiana publicly owned FTTH network. This might just be the best network available in the U.S. in terms of offering the fastest speeds at the more affordable prices and offering the most benefit to the community. The path was certainly not easy nor quick but they are now offering services. The video below is a good example of how communities can respond to incumbents that prefer to advertise and lie rather than invest in networks. Fortunately the folks down in Louisiana didn't take Slick Sam lying down - they confronted him and are building a modern network to ensure Lafayette can flourish in the future. They no longer have to beg absentee-run networks for upgrades.
A one hour slideshow discussing the economics of FTTH - unfortunately it seems to have rudimentary controls that do not allow fast fowarding or rewinding, so pay attention! You can also read the bullet points to get a sense of whether you will be interested or not.
Ann Treacy of Blandin on Broadband has covered the latest meeting of the Minnesota "Ultra High-Speed" Broadband Task Force. (Quotation marks used because the task force has dwelled on FCC-style 1990's broadband rather than the broadband experienced in our international peers.) The issues raised in this session are applicable to most of America.
Brian Redshaw, the city Administrator of Hibbing, describes some of the concerns of those living on Minnesota's Iron Range (located in Northern Minnesota) and how they attempted to solve their own problems. Unfortunately, the incumbent providers - Qwest and Mediacom - hypocritically sabotaged community efforts despite the fact that they have no plans to bring modern networks to the Range.
Ross Williams, a local businessman makes a great point: our lives are rich because of the investments made by the generation before us. As we make decisions about networks today, are we building infrastructure for future generations? I would respond that if we are subsidizing slow DSL, then we certainly are not.
Salisbury may be a great example of just how a community should build a network. They have opened many chains of communication with citizens to keep everyone involved in the process:
To get the message out about their fiber-to-the-home cable utility now under construction, Salisbury city officials already have conducted radio, newspaper and magazine interviews.
The city also hopes to provide daily "fiber" updates on its blog (www.salisburyftthblog.com) and have a continuing newspaper advertisement called "Straight Talk about Fiber" in the Post.
Any community considering the hard path of building one of these networks should take note of how Salisbury is ensuring citizens know what is happening and why this network is important to the city's future.
The success in and around Cleveland demonstrates not only the benefits of Smart Infrastructure, but also the reality that local communities are best equipped to implement today's fundamental need for infrastructure that empowers innovation.
Though Danville, Virginia, was hit hard by the simultaneously decline of tobacco and textile industries, the community has responded: Danville Utilities has been building a state of the art all fiber network. Like many communities, they built a backbone and connected the schools and government buildings first. They then started to connect businesses. This summer they will be rolling out a pilot project to connect a few thousand homes to their open services network. As they add more potential subscribers to the network, they will be more attractive to service providers. This should spur competition, increase innovation, reduce prices, and otherwise make the network more desirable to subscribers. Though the open access idea has been somewhat maligned following the troubles of UTOPIA (many of which had nothing to do with the wholesale model), the consulting firm Design Nine has helped both nDanville and The Wired Road move forward with a revised wholesale-only model. This approach may be gaining traction nationally depending on how the rules for the stimulus grants are written: Stimulating Broadband suggests broadband stimulus funding from USDA will favor "projects that will deliver end users a choice of more than one service provider." Back in Danville, the schools have much faster Internet access while shaving their telecom budgets. Other key features are listed on the network's site, including:
The nDanville Medical Network project has begun to connect a majority of doctor’s offices and medical clinics around the city. The network is already being used by the Danville Regional Medical Center to provide super high speed connectivity to satellite clinics and offices in Danville.
Last year, Last Mile featured an article on the network that includes some numbers, goals, and history of the project. Below is a video that discusses some of the benefits of the network.
Benoit Felten of FiberEvolution.com interviews Tim Nulty (former GM of Burlington Telecom, currently working on massive rural FTTH network in Vermont) at the Freedom to Connect Conference. Covers many topics, especially the economics of FTTH and why the public sector should invest in these networks.
