Dr Browder runs Bristol Tennessee Essential Services, the municipal utility on the southern side of Bristol’s Virginia border. For our 24th Community Broadband Bits podcast, he tells us how they built a FTTH network and how it has helped the community. Like so many others, they started by seeking to ensure maximum reliability of the electrical … Read More
In yet another reminder that fiber optics and wireless are complementary, not substitutes, we just read about rural California farms needing better telecommunications that the big companies have refused to provide. This article offers a good introduction to why farms need access to the Internet. Modern farming takes advantage of gains in communications technology — when … Read More
Last year, when Comcast unveiled its Internet Essentials program, the corporate powerhouse received accolades from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The program was promoted as an example of corporate philanthropy helping to bridge the digital divide. Comcast received all kinds of positive media coverage for its program. Most of that coverage failed to note that the FCC … Read More
The Salt Lake Tribune, December 2, 2012 Both public and private fiber-optic networks commonly borrow heavily as they build infrastructure and develop a viable subscriber base, several industry observers said. “When you build a network like this, it takes a minimum of several years of spending a lot of money before you start to get it … Read More
Why can Wi-Fi be so great in some places but so awful in others? (Ahem… Hotels.) Time to stop imagining Wi-Fi as magic and instead think of it just as a means of taking one connection and sharing it among many people without wires. If you take a ho-hum connection and share it with 10 people, … Read More
This new resource shares real world examples of public savings directly connected to municipal networks. Publicly owned broadband networks provide opportunities for local savings to taxpayers. Local and regional governments find new and unexpected ways to cut costs when they build their own next-generation networks. In addition to saving connectivity fees for administrative facilities, local broadband … Read More
Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) announced November 19th that it now has the capability to offer 1 Gbps service. While the BTES rates do not reflect a standard cost for the service yet, 1 Gbps is offered as an option to businesses and households. From the BTES press release: “Bristol now has one of the fastest, … Read More
As we emphasize time and time again, communities build their own networks because they have to, not because they want to. North Carolina’s Fibrant network in Salisbury is no exception and a recent technical headache is a reminder that no network is built without problems developing. Fortunately, Salisbury’s strong reputation for providing great, local customer service is helping … Read More
Our colleague at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Stacy Mitchell (too brilliant to be a relation of mine), recently gave an incredible presentation that focuses on some of the threats to our economy and how we can build stronger, more resilient communities. She doesn’t discuss broadband explicitly, but much of her critique of the largest corporations … Read More
