News

Senator Janice Bowling and Representative Kevin Brooks have decided to table their legislative efforts to remove state restrictions in Tennessee. While backing for SB 1134 and HB 1303 was growing beyond the walls of the state Capitol, the sponsors decided to shore up stronger legislative support rather than risk derailing the bill entirely. 

Municipal network news and policy are hot topics; we need help spreading the word. The Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is hiring an Internet Policy Intern.

Here is our official job posting, which is also on Idealist.org:

On April 7th, voters in Glberts, Illinois, chose not to raise taxes to deploy a municipal fiber network, reports the Daily Herald. According to the article, 81 percent of ballots cast voted against the proposal. Voter turnout was low, with only 682 ballots cast out of 4,002 registered voters in town.

Grand Junction is the latest Colorado community to vote to restore local telecommunications authority.

Longmont's NextLight municipal broadband service is surpassing projected take rates, reports the Longmont Compass. The business plan called for 34 percent but as LPC builds out the FTTH network, the first phase of the project has achieved 45 percent.

Ideally, working from home allows one to choose the environment where he or she can be most productive. In the case of Seth that was Kitsap County in Washington State. Unfortunately, incompetence on the part of Comcast, CenturyLink, and official broadband maps led Seth down a road of frustration that will ultimately require him to sell his house in order to work from home.

Grand Junction will join a number of other Colorado communities who asked voters for an exemption to SB 152 reports KKCO 11 News.

Even after the FCC’s approval of broadband expansion, state lawmakers refuse to acknowledge that EPB should be able to deliver faster, affordable Internet to nearby communities.

Tennessee legislation to expand broadband coverage on hold for now, WDEF

Tacoma's Click! network raised prices in 2010 in order to cover increases in retransmission fees for its television feeds. Fees have continually risen for Click! and other networks and, according to Tacoma's News Tribune, will continue to rise.

Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative (FTC) is now bringing gigabit service to its Alabama members.

A year ago, the FCC accepted applications from entities seeking Connect America funds for rural broadband experiments.

Bozeman elected officials voted unanimously on January 26th to approve a recently completed master plan and take the next step to deploying publicly owned open access infrastructure.

Carl Junction has been looking for a way to improve connectivity in its southwest corner of the state for several years. Plans for a fiber network did not come to pass, but the community has found a private partner to bring ubiquitous high-speed Wi-Fi to town.

For the past several months, Maine communities have been a hotbed of broadband activity. Bar Harbor, located midway along the state's Atlantic coast, is another community looking at fiber as a necessary investment. 

This article is so good, it was hard not to quote the whole thing. Do yourself a favor and check out the article for yourself-- this is exactly why we can’t trust big cable and telephone companies to serve our communities. 

If you were not able to attend Freedom to Connect in New York on March 2 - 3, you can now view archived video of presentations from Chris and others.

The Amherst Business Improvement District (BID) recently hired a firm to prepare an engineering study aimed at bringing fiber connectivity to its downtown reports MassLive. 

Hudson is moving ahead with plans to develop a publicly owned fiber network, reports the Hub Times.

We have long applauded communities that have built their own fiber networks and then elect to expand them to neighboring communities. In Louisiana for example, Lafayette could hoard its network, forcing people that want the best connectivity in the region to move within its borders. But instead, it is preparing to expand the network.

Join Chris and several other experts on municipal networks on April 25th as they address a crowd in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Yellow-Springs.Net, a group of residents who have rallied together to organize a movement to explore broadband as a utility in their community, will host the Fiber Forum.