Google Ad Compares Fiber to Broadband

If you missed our inaugural Community Broadband Film Fest series kick off last week, the entirety of the event can still be viewed here. Following the live screening before an audience of over 100 virtual participants there was a lively discussion with several of the film’s key figures, including Holland Mayor Nathan Bocks.

Mountain View officials hired the consulting firm, Entrust Solutions, to take a closer look at the city’s broadband availability metrics and device potential options for the city. The finished report and accompanying technical memorandum note that Comcast enjoys a monopoly over vast swaths of the city, resulting in expensive, slow, and spotty access.

California ISP Onward, which has increasingly partnered with California cities to expand affordable fiber access, is leveraging $4.7 million in American Rescue Plan Act broadband grants to further expand its footprint into long-unserved areas of San Diego County. The effort is running parallel with the San Diego County Library Tech Connect Program that has provided 7,000 Google Chromebooks and MiFi hotspots with unlimited data plans to residents and students to the internet for free.

In January, we released our new census of municipal networks in the United States for 2024, and the significant growth that we've seen over the last two years as more and more cities commit to building Internet infrastructure to add new tools for their local government, incentivize new economic development, and improve connectivity for households. The trend has not gone unnoticed by the monopoly players and their allies, and a new short documentary by Light Reading does a great job of outlining the stakes for local governments, residents stuck on poor connections, and the incumbents as the wave of municipal networks grows.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) recently published rules for its broadband nutrition label provides a partial victory for Internet subscribers and a potential marketing advantage for fiber providers – but may pose a challenge for wireless Internet service providers. Though the new rules were finalized in October, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have until 2024 to publish their broadband labels.

As a young woman of the Nuxalk Nation, Mallory Hans is one of about 50 people hailing from various Tribes and First Nations across North America in attendance for the latest Tribal Broadband Bootcamp, hosted at the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Resort on the Saint Regis Mohawk reservation along the New York/Canada border. .