After many years working to promote community networks, we here at Community Broadband Networks want to lay out our broader vision of a better connected country. We hope this vision pulls together all we’ve done and continue to do, and provides a framework for understanding our worldview.… Read More
Yesterday, representatives in the U.S. House introduced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act, which calls for the federal government to invest $100 billion to ensure all Americans have access to affordable, high-quality Internet access. Contact your House representative to ask them to support the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act and to sign on as a cosponsor.… Read More
For years, federal and state governments have spent billions of dollars on efforts to build broadband networks in underserved rural communities while doing very little to bring home Internet access to unconnected Americans living in our nation’s cities. A new white paper, released recently by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), outlines how this policy decision has a racist impact — benefiting mainly white, non-Hispanic people while disadvantaging many Black Americans and people of color in urban areas, where the majority of unconnected households are.… Read More
As states are considering whether and how to use federal CARES Act funding to improve Internet access, Idaho is poised to enact counter-productive limits on who can use that money by excluding community-owned solutions. Though many states have been under pressure from big monopoly providers to only fund for-profit business models with broadband subsidies, those voices seem largely absent in this Idaho fight. Instead, it is some local monopoly providers that are threatened by a wave of new community networks that break the old monopoly approach to broadband networks.… Read More
In less than a month Maine will hold a Special Referendum election which includes a measure with significant ramifications for Internet access in the state. On July 14, Mainers will be asked to vote Yes or No on Question 1, a $15 million Internet Infrastructure Bond Issue designed to bring high-speed service to the approximately 85,000 households in unserved or underserved areas. The $15 million in general obligation bonds would join $30 million in matching federal, private, and local funds and go to ConnectME to provide funding for broadband projects with an emphasis on unserved or underserved areas.… Read More
It’s been 15 years since Colorado passed SB 152, the state law intended to restrict communities from building and managing their own broadband networks In this episode Christopher talks to Ken Fellman and Geoff Wilson. They describe how monopoly Internet providers used legislative allies to introduce the anti-local authority bill aimed at protecting their profits.… Read More
This week on the Community Broadband Bits podcast, Christopher dives deeper into the history of how broadband monopolies severely restricted local Internet choice in North Carolina with HB 129, passed by the state legislature in 2011. … Read More
Washington and Massachusetts are both working with publicly owned broadband networks to deploy emergency Wi-Fi hotspots in underserved communities in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In Washington, a state-led initiative is deploying hundreds of new …… Read More
An updated report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) illustrates the remarkable progress cooperatives have made in deploying fiber optic Internet access across the country. … Read More
