This is the first of a three part series, in which we examine the current state of the UTOPIA network, how it got there, and the choices it faces going forward. At the end of a month of public meetings, hearings, and city council votes, just over half of the cities that make up UTOPIA have … Read More
Salon, July 12, 2014 A motley group of boomers and millennials recently filed into Scottish Rite Center on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, to talk about economics. Dressed casually in denim, lace and cotton and sporting dreadlocks, bobs and buzz cuts, these small-business owners hailed from rural bergs, little towns and long-neglected urban … Read More
Whitewater, Wisconsin, a city of just under 15,000 people that sits midway between Madison and Milwaukee, is considering its options for establishing a municipal broadband utility. As reported by the local Daily Union newspaper, members of the city council, the community development authority, other local bodies, and the public met this week to hear a feasibility … Read More
In the first part of this series, we discussed how spectrum could be better managed to allow far greater communications capacity, but only if the FCC abandoned its traditional approach of auctioning spectrum to carriers for monopolistic use. In this part, we’ll discuss how devices could take advantage of a new approach to spectrum management and … Read More
Harford County, a mixed suburban and rural area in northeast Maryland, flipped the switch in late May on its Harford Metro Area Network (HMAN). The network includes 160 miles of fiber bringing high speed broadband to 150 sites, including all area schools, fire stations, libraries, and county and municipal buildings. The project required $13.8 million in … Read More
Examiner.com, July 8, 2014 The D.C. Council’s second vote on a bill to reduce the amount of city garbage dumped in landfills or sent to incinerators is scheduled for July 14, 2014. But D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, a proponent of sustainability, has sought to delay the bill. Imagine three different colored garbage cans in front … Read More
This is the first in two-part series on spectrum basics and how we could better manage the spectrum to encourage innovation and prevent either large corporations or government from interfering with our right to communicate. Part 2 is available here. We often think of all our wireless communications as traveling separate on paths: television, radio, Wi-Fi, … Read More
Electronic Frontier Foundation, June 20, 2014 This weekend at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas, some mayors will take a strong stand in support of net neutrality. According to an op-ed by Mayors Ed Lee of San Francisco and Ed Murray of Seattle, the city leaders are unveiling a resolution calling on the … Read More
Twin Cities Pioneer Press, June 20, 2014 John Socha once yearned to work from his Spring Grove home, but was crippled by out-of-date technology – notably his excruciatingly pokey rural Minnesota dial-up Internet access. So Socha, a creator of digital-audio content for radio, had to journey nine miles to a Caledonia office for an Internet connection fast enough … Read More
