Jason Bird is the Electrical Superintendent at the city of Princeton Utilities in Illinois. He joins us for the 30th episode of our Community Broadband Bits Podcast to explain why Princeton built a rather unique network. Princeton has built a fiber network to connect some of the local businesses and uses broadband over power lines (BPL) to provide a low cost option for area residents.
Princeton offers another example of how a community can build and own the infrastructure while partnering with a local company that will provision the services. This approach appeals to many towns that recognize the benefits of ensuring the network is owned by the community but do not want to provide services themselves.
This network helped save hundreds of jobs and has benefited the community in many ways — just one of which is that they were selected as a site that allowed families to videochat with our troops deployed abroad over the holidays.
Read our coverage of Princeton’s network here.
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Listen to previous episodes here.
Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.