News

California

Council votes to pursue study of municipal broadband by Anne Ternus-Bellamy, Davis Enterprise

Colorado 

Up in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado ski town of Breckenridge has decided to set aside plans to operate its new fiber network as open access, opting instead for a single Internet service provider (ISP).

Vinton, Iowa, is moving ahead with plans for a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. This small town is home to only 5,100, but soon it will have Internet service that rivals the largest cities.

California

Fullerton FiberCity Network will use open access approach by Phil Britt, Telecompetitor

Colorado

Washington's Douglas County Community Network (DCCN) began as a way to improve the local Public Utility District’s electric system; construction of the network started in the late 1990s.

Before your community can start bringing better connectivity to municipal facilities, offering dark fiber to businesses or local ISPs, or supplying Internet access to residents, you must develop the infrastructure. In the past couple of years, a growing interest in microtrenching has spawned questions from local communities looking for options to traditional excavation.

Beresford, South Dakota (pop. 2,000), has a long history of providing for itself. Located in the southeast corner of the state, Beresford operates its own electric utility as well as a municipal liquor store and golf course.

At a May 6 City Commission meeting in Decatur, Georgia, city leaders approved a project budget of $2.35 million to build a municipal I-Net and award the construction contract to Georgia-based Network Cabling Infrastructures, Inc.

California

Guest Opinion: Palo Alto needs a citywide municipal fiber-to-the-premises utility by Jeff Hoel, Palo Alto Online

Idaho

The fifth anniversary of the announcement of the KentuckyWired project is approaching later this year. As voters start to assess their candidates’ job performance, the unfinished and over budget middle mile public-private partnership (P3) has become an albatross that incumbents aren’t able to easily cast off.

During the 20-year on-again-off-again relationship between Palo Alto and a possible fiber optic municipal network, the people of the community have waited while plans have changed, leadership has shifted, and city staff has researched potential infrastructure plans. For the people of the city, it’s a long time to be patient.

In late April 2019, the Vermont Public Service Department announced $220,000 worth of grants to bring high-speed Internet service to 220 homes and businesses around the state.

Alabama

State Sen. Clay Scofield: Survival of rural Alabama depends on broadband expansion by Tim Howe, Yellowhammer News

Arkansas

At their May 14th board meeting, the Traverse City Light & Power Board (TCLP) decided to move forward and begin contract negotiations with Fujitsu Network Communications to expand the city’s fiber optic network in order to begin serving residents as well as businesses.

Legislative changes are helping electric cooperatives continue to expand high-quality Internet access in rural parts of America. At least three state governments have bills in the works that empower cooperatives to provide high-speed Internet service in their service territories.

Georgia, Maryland, Alabama

At a Lancaster City Council meeting on May 14th, community leaders voted unanimously to take a step toward establishing several municipal utilities, including a publicly owned fiber optic network.

Good Experiences with Their Public Utility 

Cooperatives are building the next-generation networks that will support rural areas long into the future. We’ve covered this extensively at ILSR as we have gathered materials on community networks from across the country into one place.

About ten years ago, we first reported on Johnson City, Tennessee. At that time, the community was in the process of installing fiber to improve reliability for their public electric utility.

Arizona

Thin on broadband: Tribal areas still struggle with lagging technology by Keerthi Vedantam, Cronkite News

California

On April 4th, 2019, the Board of Commissioners of Berrien County, Michigan approved a resolution that formally acknowledges that achieving countywide access to high-speed Internet is crucial to the county’s mission of improving quality of life for present and future gener