After a city in North Carolina built a Fiber-to-the-Home network competing with Time Warner Cable, the cable giant successfully lobbied to take that decision away from other cities. The city of Wilson’s decision and resulting network was recently examined in a case study by Todd O’Boyle and Christopher Mitchell titled Carolina’s Connected Community: Wilson Gives Greenlight … Read More
Following the collapse of key industries, a town of 50,000 in eastern North Carolina had to make a hard choice. It wanted to support existing businesses and attract new ones but the cable and telephone companies were not interested in upgrading their networks for cutting edge capacity. So Wilson decided to build its own fiber optic … Read More
The fastest networks in the nation are built by local governments, a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Benton Foundation reveals Chattanooga, Tennessee, is well known for being the first community with citywide access to a “gig,” or the fastest residential connections to the Internet available nationally. Less known are Bristol, Virginia, and … Read More
In an Op-Ed for Bloomberg, Susan Crawford highlights the advantages of publicly owned broadband. She notes that ILSR is tracking advances as more communities decide to build their own networks to ensure they are not lost in the race for advancement… Read More
USA Today, February 5, 2012 In his article, journalist Rick Jervis turned to Christopher Mitchell on the development of community networks. More than 150 local governments across the country have built or are planning to build cyber networks, says Christopher Mitchell of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a non-profit group that advocates community development and … Read More
