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This fact sheet provides information on the most common ways local communities finance their municipal networks. When a community decides it needs to establish its own publicly owned network infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges is financing the investment. Each community is unique but three main methods of financing are most popular. This fact sheet offers … Read More
Santa Monica has built a fiber network called City Net that has lowered its own costs for telecommunications, helped to retain businesses, and attracted new businesses to the community. Built incrementally without debt, it offers a roadmap any community can draw lessons from. Unlike the majority of municipal fiber networks, Santa Monica does not have a … Read More
Kansas is the latest legislative battle ground in the fight to preserve local self-reliance. The Kansas Legislature is taking up SB 304 to limit local municipalities’ authority to invest in publicly owned networks. While the language of the bill states the purpose is to “encourage widespread use of technological advances” for video and broadband at competitive … Read More
This article by Christopher Mitchell originally ran on MuniNetworks.org, our site dedicated to broadband and community networks. To finalize our series on reflections from Seattle and Gigabit Squared, I discuss open access networks and how the requirement that a network directly pay all its costs effectively dooms it in the U.S. Read part one here and … Read More
ILSR and the Center for Popular Democracy now offer the Building Community Access Policy Brief. We teamed up with CPD to bring you a fact sheet that succinctly describes our country’s problem with unequal access to broadband. The fact sheet also offers basic solutions that can facilitate development of publicly owned networks. In addition to offering … Read More
This article originally ran January 15 on MuniNetworks.org, our site dedicated to broadband and community networks. Our analysis zeros in on the Court’s take on local authority, an issue near and dear to our mission at ILSR. As we noted yesterday, the DC Circuit of Appeals has decided that the FCC does not have authority to implement its … Read More
This article originally ran January 14 on MuniNetworks.org, our site dedicated to broadband and community networks. In addition to the broader topic of Network Neutrality, the decision will affect local communities’ authority to serve their citizens. This is the first of a series of stories from Chris that analyze the potential impact of the decision and how it … Read More
This article originally ran on MuniNetworks.org, our site dedicated to broadband and community networks. This the second in a series of posts exploring lessons learned from the Seattle Gigabit Squared project, which now appears unlikely to be built. The first post is available here and focuses on the benefits massive cable companies already have as well as … Read More
We originally published this story on MuniNetworks.org, ILSR’s site dedicated to our broadband initiative. This is the first in a series of articles on Seattle and Gigabit Squared by Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Initiative. A few weeks ago, a Geekwire interview with outgoing Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced that the Gigabit Squared project there was … Read More
