Nestled in a valley in the Colorado rockies, the city of Montrose has voted overwhelmingly to reestablish local authority over whether to build a municipal fiber network. With nearly 20,000 people, Montrose does have cable service from Charter and DSL from CenturyLink but neither service is meeting local needs. Virgil Turner, Director of Innovation and Citizen … Read More
“The vast majority of Europeans still only have DSL service available, which we in the United States consider really almost an obsolete technology now.” – Jeffrey Eisenbach, Director of the Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy, American Enterprise Institute. For the second time this year, one of the major defenders of the cable and telephone … Read More
If all had gone according to the plan behind the 1996 Telecommunications Act, we would have lots of competition among Internet service providers, not just cable and DSL but other technologies as well. Alas, the competing technologies never really appeared and various incarnations of the FCC effectively gutted the common carriage requirements at the heart of … Read More
The Logan Journal recently reported that the Russellville Electric Plant Board (EPB) now offers gigabit service to local businesses. The article notes that Net Index, an online tool to measure download and upload speeds, recognizes EPB as the first Gig city in Kentucky. To learn more about the community and its network, we talked with Robert White, … Read More
The incomparable Diane Rehm show on WAMU recently tackled the network neutrality ruling [listen to it there]. Guests included Cecilia Kang, Susan Crawford, and Jeffrey Eisenach from the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank famous for promoting what is best for massive, politically influencial firms. Jeff and I both took part in a debate about municipal … 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
We recently reported on the WhiteSpaces Pilot Project from the Gigabit Libraries Network (GLN). In order to find out the results in the trenches, we contacted two participant communities: Delta County, Colorado and Pascagoula, Mississippi. The project connects libraries with vendors that supply equipment tapping into what has been television spectrum, or “white spaces.” A Wi-Fi … Read More
WUNC, a public radio station out of Chapel Hill in North Carolina, covered community owned networks and broadband availability on its recent “State of Things” midday program. I was a guest along with a local resident and a public relations executive from Time Warner Cable to discuss North Carolina’s broadband compared to other states and its … Read More
