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
In February, ILSR’s Christopher Mitchell travelled to Stockholm to share our work on broadband at an event titled Fibre: The key to creating world-class IT regions. On February 21st, he presented info to attendees on the status of broadband in the U.S. While Chris was there, he also spoke one-on-one with Anders Broberg, one of the … Read More
In Episode #83 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, we bring you Barry Lynn to talk about the direct and indirect threats that make market consolidation dangerous. There are many threats from monopolies and many are much more dangerous to a free society than higher prices. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author … Read More
Comments (edited version) by Neil Seldman at the Zero Waste Symposium – held February 4, 2014 Sponsored by Zero Waste San Diego and the California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA) February 4, 2014 Thank you very much, Rick. It’s always a pleasure to come back to California – certainly San Diego. Many of you know that I … Read More
What is energy decentralization, who’s doing it, and why does it matter? John Farrell, Director of Democratic Energy, answers these questions in an interview segment with Thom Hartmann on his Big Picture program on February 18, 2014. Skip to 30:06 to see John’s interview.
For years, the only effective way to go solar was to have tens of thousands of dollars and a sunny roof. Investing in solar was nearly impossible. But a couple years ago, a new notion called crowdfunding got its start, and California-Based Mosaic was on the forefront. Its crowdfunding program allows people to pool their resources, large or small, to build community-based solar installations. It’s not about charity, either. Mosaic’s pioneering crowdfunding effort is letting people across the country earn a modest return on their solar investment and putting clean local power on rooftops everywhere.
We spoke with Mosaic president Billy Parish via Skype in mid-February about the potential for crowdfunding to give most Americans a chance to invest in renewable energy.… Read More
This presentation presents the key findings of the 2014 Independent Business Survey. It includes new data on the impact of “buy local” campaigns; a ranking of the biggest challenges facing small businesses, from online competitors to the difficulty of obtaining financing; and information on the public policy changes that small business owners believe would most help their businesses.… Read More
When Walmart’s top executives organized a live broadcast event to present what they claimed was progress in greening the company’s operations, ILSR joined with leaders of OUR Walmart and Environmental Action to produce a live webcast response attended by hundreds of environmental activists. Click through to watch our 45-minute event.… Read More
