Community Broadband Bits (archived)

Waverly, a town of 10,000 in Iowa, decided to create a city owned telecommunications utility with a successful referendum vote in 2000 but has only recently decided to move forward with a major investment to offer services. Mike Litterer, Interim General Manager of Waverly Light and Power, joins us to discuss the project. Following the vote, the cable and telephone company suddenly decided to upgrade their services, which led the town to hold off on a community owned network.

We welcome Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge back to the show to discuss the latest update in the so-called IP Transition.

Clarksville is the fifth largest city in the state but was among the first networks in nation to offer symmetrical fast connections with a 10 Mbps basic offering when it launched. Christy Batts, Broadband Division Manager of Clarksville Department of Electricity, joins us to share some of the lessons learned and successes from Clarksville, which is now offering a gigabit everywhere in the community. Clarksville has a significant population attached to a military base, which results in significant churn - meaning frequent connect and disconnect requests. High churn is costly to utilities.

For our 50th episode, we're trying something new: Lisa and I respond to three common claims made by opponents of community owned networks. We owe these three particular arguments to the Executive Director of the trade association of Wisconsin telephone companies. Each of the clips we respond to come from claims he made at a workshop at the 2012 WiscNet conference. We play a short claim by him and then Lisa and I respond to it.

The United States has long recognized that everyone should have access to a telephone and has established a variety of government programs to achieve that end.

At any conference dealing with building broadband networks, one hears talk of open trench policies or "dig once" approaches. For today's episode of Community Broadband Bits, City Manager Scott Lazenby of Sandy, Oregon, joins us to talk about how Sandy has proactively placed conduit underground for fiber use. We discuss the instances where it is practical and where it is not to place conduit when other utility work has open streets. Sandy has an ordinance requiring new developments to have conduit placed with other utilities at no cost to the city.

The city of San Leandro has formed a partnership with a local company now named Lit San Leandro to expand business access to the Internet. We talk with San Leandro's Chief Innovation Officer Deborah Acosta and Judi Clark, a consultant with Lit San Leandro, to learn more about their approach. San Leandro already had conduit assets and Lit San Leandro is pulling fiber through it for the deployment.

The North Georgia Network was the first recipient of a BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) stimulus grant in the nation and has been an interesting success story. For the latest episode of our Community Broadband Bits podcast, President and CEO Paul Belk of the NGN joins us to discuss the history, present, and future of the project. The North Georiga Network is comprised of two rural electric cooperatives and local economic development organizations affiliated with eight counties.

This is a show I have been wanting to do for years - discussing some of the common mistakes that have been make by community owned networks. Offering broadband and other telecommunications services is a difficult business for any entity, public or private and all network owners make mistakes.

Episode #44 of our Community Broadband Bits podcast expands on our story exploring a major victory over bad AT&T-driven legislation in Kentucky.