Just this week, the Office of the Legislative Auditor General of the State of Utah released a report to the Utah Legislature on UTOPIA. The report, titled A Performance Audit of the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency rehashes prior criticisms of UTOPIA and tells the abridged story of the Auditor’s understanding of UTOPIA’s financial troubles. While … Read More
Of all the broadband stimulus projects, the Lake County FTTH network in Minnesota has been one of the most embattled in the nation (possibly only behind AT&T’s attacks on South Carolina projects). Mediacom has pulled out all the stops, including filing complaints with the Inspector General that included dubious allegations at best and then complaining after … Read More
Over the past few years, we provided continuing coverage as Longmont, Colorado, considered, and eventually approved, a referendum (two actually) to authorize the municipality to offer broadband services to local businesses and residents. The City installed the fiber as part of its electricity utility infrastructure long ago but Qwest then pushed a law through the state … Read More
Today, Slate published an opinion piece by me and Sascha Meinrath from the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation talking about the important role of community broadband in solving the nation’s broadband problem. A snippet: In the meantime, local communities are taking matters into their own hands and have created remarkable citywide fiber-to-the-home broadband networks. … Read More
Our sixth episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast features a discussion with Cheryl Leanza, broadband consultant with Progressive States Network. Cheryl has been very active in legislative battles at the state level, where she has helped to defend the public against anti-consumer deregulation led by AT&T, CenturyLink, and cable lobbyists. We touched on the effort … Read More
In the excitement around Google’s unveiling of the $70 gigabit broadband connection in Kansas City, some may be wondering how it is that Google can offer a gigabit for moderately more than what most of us pay for far slower cable broadband connections. On one side of the equation is the fact that big cable companies … Read More
The news that the New Orleans Times-Picayune would dramatically cut back on its printed edition led to a fine article discussing the role of the digital divide as it becomes harder to live without access to the Internet. It’s harder to profit from the investment in broadband infrastructure in rural areas where fewer residents live further … Read More
In keeping with our coverage of states that revoke local authority to prevent AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and the like from having to deal with any actual competition, we want to highlight the video below that explains how a modern bill becomes a law. It ain’t like it used to be and it doesn’t have to … Read More
Several months ago, we wrote this post but it got lost in the system. We think it still worthwhile, so here it is. The word “cartel” drums up many negative annotations – drug cartels, oil cartels. Never anything positive, such as bunny cartels or chocolate cartels. Harold Feld (of Public Knowledge) explains the emergence of another … Read More
