Back in March, I spoke at the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities Telecom conference, which is always an event with interesting people. While there, I met Doug Hammer and Krista Allen of Harlan Utilities. With just over 5,000 people, Harlan is small but they actually have better Internet and cable choices than most of us, in large part due to the municipal utility.
Doug is the Director of Marketing and Krista the Director of Finance & Customer Service. We spoke again for this week’s show about the challenge small ISPs have in just completing the paperwork required of ISPs by the federal government. Though small utilities like Harlan have only a few staff people, they are subject to many of the same forms as much larger companies.
We talk about the paperwork, but also some of the benefits that Harlan’s municipal utility brings to the community.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show – please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
This show is 22 minutes long and can be played below on this page or via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed.
Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here.
Thanks to Persson for the music, licensed using Creative Commons. The song is “Blues walk.”
This article is apart of MuniNetworks. The original piece can be found here
