Martinsville, located in south central Virginia within Henry County, is home to about 14,000 people, 10% fewer than in 2000. The town built a city-owned fiber optic network to connect local businesses and spur economic development in cooperation with the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative. The backbone of the Martinsville Information Network (MINET), consists of 48 strands of … Read More
For those waking up from a two week nap, the publicly owned FiberNet Monticello recently saw the private provider managing it step down, the City tell Bondholders that it would not make up the difference between revenues and debt payments, and us examining what the network has achieved. On Monday, the Monticello City Council joined forces … Read More
Over the weekend, while listening to an old episode of Star Talk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I was reminded of just how incredible the open Internet is. And what happens when a few massive corporations dominate the airwaves. Neil was interviewing Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lt. Uhura on Star Trek – an African-American … Read More
Mount Rogers, Virginia, has the distinction of being the highest elevation in the state. Located in Grayson County, the town is in the southeastern southwestern part of the state, high in the Appalachian Mountains. Needless to say, the region is challenged geographically when it comes to getting their residents and businesses connected to the Internet. Nearby … Read More
Monticello has been all over the muni broadband news lately, in the wake of a letter it sent to bondholders [pdf] alerting them that the City would no longer make up the difference between the revenues produced by the system and the debt payments. This came shortly after the company managing the network decided to step … Read More
Our most recent joint effort with the Benton Foundation, Broadband At the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks, is now available for your e-reader: On Amazon’s Kindle Barnes and Noble’s Nook Google Play You can even find it for your iPad in the App Store Each format is priced in the neighborhood of … Read More
Star Tribune, June 7, 2012 Once seen as a national model, Monticello’s broadband network can no longer pay its bills. The city, about 40 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, notified banks and bondholders Wednesday that it will no longer make debt service payments on $26 million worth of revenue bonds that were sold to build … Read More
Yesterday the South Carolina Senate voted in a second reading of H 3508, a bill that has been debated in the State Legislature since it was introduced in January of 2011. The bill, pushed by AT&T and ALEC, has been on our radar for quite some time. We have watched this piece of legislation because it … Read More
If you live in Boston, Baltimore, Albany, Syracuse, or Buffalo, you won’t be getting FiOS from Verizon. Absent any public investment, you will likely be stuck with DSL and cable… like 80% of the rest of us. Not long after Verizon announced it would cease expanding FiOS, we learned that Verizon was coming to an arrangement … Read More
