California
Santa Cruz partners with local internet provider for next-gen Internet by Jessica York, Santa Cruz SentinelMaine
Maine
Maine Gov. Paul LePage Vetoes State Broadband Fund by Colin Wood, GovTech
New York
Audit Reveals Verizon Tried To Corner NYC Broadband Market By Striking Exclusive Landlord Deals by Karl Bode, TechDirt
Verizon’s refusing to serve millions of people, but making it impossible for anyone else to do so either. If you’ve followed the municipal broadband debate, that’s effectively the same logic the mega-ISPs have displayed on a national level, and this kind of behavior by incumbent ISPs (especially if you watched the ILEC/CLEC wars of the late 90s and early aughts) is a major contributor to the nation’s utterly mediocre rankings in most broadband metrics.
North Carolina
Backed by the telecommunications industry N.C., Tenn. fighting attempts at city-run broadband by Tim Mandell, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
Pennsylvania
Lancaster city debuts free wi-fi in bins park by Dan Nephin, Lancaster Online
Free Wi-Fi in public areas is a side benefit of the municipal broadband program the city is building to improve city services, such as remote water-meter reading. Residential and business Internet subscriptions will also be offered, according to city officials.
Texas
The Revolution will be Digitized: The Road to Broadband by Ron Nirenberg, The Rivard Report
Washington
Seattle City Council Member Urges Grass Roots Broadband Revolution After Ten Years Of Failing To Fix Broken Broadband Duopoly by Karl Bode, TechDirt
“Seattle would be the largest city in the country to implement municipal broadband. We should expect Comcast and CenturyLink to go to every length to keep their unchallenged duopoly in Seattle. Countering them will require a mass citywide movement, much like the one we needed to win $15/hour last year by successfully overcoming the financial and political clout of fast food and retail giants…It is up to us working people to build a strong enough grassroots movement for municipal broadband to force elected officials to put Seattle’s need for universal, affordable high speed connectivity over Comcast and CenturyLink’s insatiable drive for profits.”
Winning Municipal Broadband Will Take a Grassroots Movement by Khama Savant, Seattle.gov
What Can Tacoma Teach Seattle About Muni Broadband? And should we care more about Chattanooga, Tennessee? by Jennifer Karami, Seattle Weekly
Other Broadband News
FCC No Longer Buys ISPs’ Excuses For Not Upgrading Their Networks by Doug Dobbins, Takes On Tech
FCC’s Sohn: 25 Mbps a Snail’s Pace in Fiber World… says Broadband Nets Don’t Meet Users’ Needs by John Eggerton, MultiChannel
“In our Connect America Fund order last December, we guaranteed broadband providers more than $10 billion over six years for broadband deployment to underserved areas,” she said. “If the price cap providers don’t take advantage of these funds, other providers will be able to take their place, including municipal systems and electric cooperatives that want to deploy fiber networks.”
This article is apart of MuniNetworks. The original piece can be found here
