Community Broadband Bits Podcast

A few weeks back, Colorado voters overwhelmingly chose local authority and community networks over the status quo Internet connections. Approximately 50 local governments had referenda to reclaim authority lost under the anti-competition state law originally called SB 152 that CenturyLink's predecessor Qwest pushed into law in 2005. This week, Virgil Turner and Audrey Danner join us to discuss what is happening in Colorado. Virgil is the Director of Innovation and Citizen Engagement in Montrose and last joined us for episode 95. Audrey Danner is the Executive Director of Craig Moffat Economic Development and co-chair of the Mountain Connect Broadband Development Conference. We previously discussed Mountain Connect in episode 105 and episode 137.

Carole Monroe is back on Community Broadband Bits for Episode 177 this week, to discuss the East Central Vermont Fiber network and its unique financing model. Carole is now the General Manager for EC Fiber. She previously joined us for episode 36 to discuss FastRoads in New Hampshire. And we previously discussed EC Fiber with Leslie Nulty in episode 9. Years later, EC Fiber is approaching 1,200 subscribers in rural Vermont and is growing much more rapidly with some open access dark fiber connections created by the state in a specific effort to enable last mile connectivity. We discuss the impact on the community, how much people in rural regions desire high quality Internet access rather than slow DSL, and also a brief mention of some progress in New Hampshire to expand the Fast Roads network.

An interesting confluence in events in Maine have resulted in what some are calling the "Maine model" of fiber optic networks that are available to multiple Internet Service Providers to encourage competition and high quality services. The CEO of GWI, Fletcher Kittredge, joins us this week to explain this model and where it is currently being implemented. GWI is a local firm, rooted in Maine and focused on delivering high quality services with great customer support.

Chattanooga returns to the Community Broadband Bits podcast this week in episode 175 to talk about their 10 Gbps upgrade, the fibervention campaign, TN4Fiber, and having surpassed 75,000 subscribers. For so much content, we have three guests joining us from Chattanooga's Electric Power Board (the EPB in EPB Fiber): Danna Bailey is the VP of Corporate Communications, Beth Johnson is the Marketing Manager, and Colman Keane is the Director of Fiber Technology.

When communities consider building their own network, they are often venturing outside their areas of expertise and have to get advice from consultants and industry experts. This week, we talk with two guests from Vantage Point, an employee owned engineering and consulting firm that works with a variety of clients, from private companies to municipalities on telecommunications matters.

Ammon, Idaho, continues to quietly build a future-looking open access fiber network. Though the City won't be providing services directly to subscribers, the network it is building and the model it has created could revolutionize public safety. I just spent several days with them shooting our next video on community fiber networks (look for that in January). In episode 173 of our Community Broadband Bits podcast, we talk with City Technology Director Bruce Patterson and Systems Network Administrator Ty Ashcraft. Bruce explains how they plan to finance the network as it moves from the current residential pilot phase to being available broadly to any residents that want to connect, likely using a local improvement district model. Then Ty tells us about the portal that subscribers will be able to use to instantaneously pick and change service providers offering various services.

The holy grail of Internet access for many of us continues to be a situation in which multiple providers can compete on a level playing field, which should lower costs to subscribers and encourage innovation. Often called open access, this may involve a municipality building a fiber optic network and making it available on a wholesale level - a model that has been tried to various degrees of success.

When Wilson decided to build its municipal fiber network in North Carolina, it found a strong opponent in Tina Mooring, store manager of Computer Central. One of the local business' sources of revenue was connecting people to the Internet and they were fearful that they would lose customers to what became Greenlight, the municipal fiber network that delivered the first 100 Mbps citywide service in the state and later the first citywide gig as well.

The Spanish Fork Community Network has long been among the most successful community broadband projects. And now that the community has finished paying off the debt of the network, they are using the net income to upgrade to a fiber network that will be capable of delivering a symmetrical gigabit to anyone in town. John Bowcut, Director of Information Systems and SFCN Director, speaks with us again this week to explain how the project is doing and how they plan to upgrade to fiber.

For this week's Community Broadband Bits, we are delving into an area of law and practice that is quite important for Internet network deployment but tends to be dry and confusing. Not for us today though, we have Sean Stokes, a Principal at Baller Herbst Stokes & Lide, joining us to explain Right-of-Way basics. We talk about what the public Right-of-Way (ROW) is, who is responsible for maintaining it, how entities can get access to it and how poles are distinct from the ROW. We discuss how much power local governments and pole owners have to deny access to these assets and some of the costs associated with make-ready.