In February, ILSR’s Christopher Mitchell travelled to Stockholm to share our work on broadband at an event titled Fibre: The key to creating world-class IT regions. On February 21st, he presented info to attendees on the status of broadband in the U.S. While Chris was there, he also spoke one-on-one with Anders Broberg, one of the … Read More
In light of the recent announcement, community leaders in Maryland and Kansas are rallying behind the FCC as it considers its authority under Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In a show of support, the Westminster Mayor and Common Council passed Resolution 14-01, a statement in support of restoring and preserving local authority to build networks. … Read More
In 1998, Santa Monica created a Telecommunications Master Plan that has guided it for the past fifteen years in building an impressive fiber network connecting all community anchor institutions and many business districts. We have just released a case study detailing this effort, entitled: Santa Monica City Net: An Incremental Approach to Building a Fiber Optic … Read More
A recent in-depth article from the Keene Sentinel updates us on the status of New Hampshire’s HB 286, which would expand bonding authority for local governments. New Hampshire law currently restricts bonding authority for Internet infrastructure to towns with no access to the Internet, but nearly all communities have at least some slow broadband access in … Read More
We should probably be thanking Comcast for its attempt to take over Time Warner Cable. It has inspired a shocking amount of vitriol against the cable monopolies, including an entertaining but NSFW video with strong language from Funny or Die. Whereas people were largely content to mostly silently hate Comcast and Time Warner Cable separately, the … Read More
UPDATE: According to Pete Ashdown, the amendment has been pulled. Stay vigilant, these things rarely just go away. We reported earlier this month that UTOPIA was once again facing legislative attack at the state level in the form of HB60. While the House has focused on other issues, the Utah Senate is launching its own attack. … Read More
While Comcast focuses on increasing its market power rather than improving services in the communities it monopolizes, no one should be surprised that we are seeing a surge in interest for building community owned networks. We’ve heard from many people who want to learn how they can start – more than we can always respond to, … Read More
In Episode #83 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, we bring you Barry Lynn to talk about the direct and indirect threats that make market consolidation dangerous. There are many threats from monopolies and many are much more dangerous to a free society than higher prices. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author … Read More
The FCC is now contemplating how much newly freed spectrum to retain for public use and how much to auction off to private companies for their exclusive use. Public Knowledge is leading the effort to ensure we retain enough shared spectrum to unleash more innovation and public benefits rather than simply padding the profits of a … Read More
