Last week, we unveiled the new podcast project we’re working on with the nonprofit NC Broadband Matters, whose focus is on bringing ubiquitous broadband coverage to local communities for residents and businesses in North Carolina. The ten episode podcast series, titled “Why NC Broadband Matters,” explores broadband and related issues in North Carolina.
In episode two, “Fiber Rich Wilson, Why and What’s Next?”, Christopher talks with Gene Scott, General Manager for Outside Plant for Greenlight, a division of the city of Wilson, North Carolina. If you’ve heard many of our podcasts, you know all about Wilson and their municipal Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. We’ve followed the development of the network for years and have reported on many of their innovations.
Gene gives us an inside perspective. He shares a brief history of the network’s development and why the community chose to use an architecture that is fiber rich. Gene helps us to understand some terminology that most of us aren’t familiar with unless we’re in the field, and he gets into the many benefits of fiber over copper.
Christopher and Gene also discuss how Greenlight and the city have been working with the local community college to prepare more people to work in the growing industry. It isn’t all climbing poles and hanging wires and the need for high-quality Internet access guarantees there’s plenty of future opportunity in the public and private sectors.
To learn more about the story behind Wilson’s Greenlight Community Network, check out our report from 2012, and our 2013 report.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
This show is 28 minutes long and can be played on this page, on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed, at the Community Broadband Bits page, or at the NC Broadband Matters page. We encourage you to check out other “Why NC Broadband Matters” content at the podcast feed so you don’t miss future bonus content that may not appear in the Community Broadband Bits Podcast feed.
Read the transcript for this episode.
Listen to other Community Broadband Bits episodes here or view all episodes in our index.
Thanks to Shane Ivers for the Music: What’s The Angle? by Shane Ivers – https://www.silvermansound.com a Creative Commons Attribution (4.0) license.
This article was originally published on ILSR’s MuniNetworks.org. Read the original here.
