One of our kindred spirits across the pond reached out to me after I wrote about Vermont’s self-funded community network. The B4RN initiative, Broadband for the Rural North, has launched using…… Read More
Christopher Mitchell is one of several voices discussing the importance of funding rural broadband throughout the U.S. WMMT is a radio station in Kentucky, frequently covering rural issues in the Appalachians.
Also featured are Dee Davis of Rural Strategies and Lisa Fannin of the Mountain Telephone Cooperative in NE Kentucky, the first entity in Kentucky to receive a broadband stimulus award.
ILSR has continued working to preserve local authority to build broadband networks in both North Carolina and South Carolina. Massive companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable are lobbying heavily to strip communities of deciding locally whether to build and own essential infrastructure — networks that these companies are often not willing to build. … Read More
ILSR has released the Community Broadband Map, showing the location of over one hundred communities that have rejected the tyranny of existing carriers and built their own networks. Along with the map, ILSR has released a report, Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly.
“The Community Broadband Map reveals the depth and breadth of publicly owned networks,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative.
Quietly, virtually unreported on, a new player has emerged in the United States telecommunications sector: publicly owned networks. Today over 54 cities, big and small, own citywide fiber networks while another 79 own citywide cable networks. Over 3 million people have access to telecommunications networks whose objective is to maximize value to the community in which they are located rather than to distant stockholders and corporate executives.
For several years ILSR has been tracking telecommunications developments at the local and state level. We have worked with businesses and communities protecting their right to self-determination via the fundamental infrastructure for the information-based economy. This report offers some of our findings.
ILSR produced a video to highlight the impressive dominance of publicly-owned networks in North Carolina.
While the rest of the world is working to become more innovative and competitive, the North Carolina General Assembly is considering a bill that will stifle innovation, hurt job creation and slow economic development. The Bill, H129/S87 will effectively prevent any community from building a broadband network and impose onerous restrictions on existing networks.ILSR is helping groups in North Carolina to stop this bill from becoming law.… Read More
North Carolina consumers and businesses would pay more for slower internet access when communities are preempted from building broadband infrastructure according to a new analysis released today by the Institute for Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. This analysis shows that community fiber networks are faster and cheaper than incumbent cable and telephone networks in North Carolina.… Read More
