Tag: "FTTH"

Georgia Mayor: "I Hate to Think What Our Community Would Be Like Without Our Network"

Posted February 25, 2013 by lgonzalez

Recently on Gigabit Nation, host Craig Settles visited with Mayor Max Beverly from Thomasville, Georgia. As our readers know, the Georgia General Assembly is again considering a bill to limit municipal efforts to bring connectivity to local residents and businesses. That bill is currently scheduled to be heard on Tuesday afternoon, 2/26, but many people have already expressed their anger at it in Facebook comments on the bill page.

HB 282 sets a very low bar for what is considered "served" - 1.5 Mbps - and prohibits municipal networks from serving those areas while also imposing a new heavy cost on investing in unserved areas.

Mayor Beverly discusses how he and other Georgia community leaders are fighting HB 282 through education. Speaking from first-hand experience, he finds that elected officials often turn from support to opposition when they hear about the incredible success of Thomasville.

Mayor Beverly finds himself sharing the story of Thomasville's victories that are all tied with the network, created in 1999. In Thomasville:

direct profits from the telecommunications utility have eliminated city taxes - police, fire, and other city services are funded through the $2 million+ contributed to the general fund
over 500,000 people in south Georgia have received state-of-the-art healthcare services which could not have been delivered without the incredible capacity of the network over a multi-county area
over 6,000 jobs (including many in the hospital and its clinics) have come to Thomasville through employers that would not have been able to locate there prior to the services offered through the network
about 70 schools over a 10 county region receive network services that Mayor Beverly describes as a "game changer" in educational opportunity

Settles and Mayor Beverly also spent time on what makes Thomasville such a success. The Mayor attributes the community's entrepreneurial approach and their unsurpassed customer relationships. The network and its staff are...

Chattanooga's Network On Knoxville News

Posted February 24, 2013 by lgonzalez

We recently came across a news report from Knoxville's WBIR.

The video touches on how the city has gone from a town that used to rely on the choo-choo to a metropolitan wonder that flies over fiber optic cables. Walter Cronkite called Chattanooga the "dirtiest city in America" but the network is transforming it into a technology capitol. Reporter Eleanor Beck focuses on the network's many customers and how they use their connections. Among those customers are an increasing number of businesses who seek the 1 gig service.

Beck spoke with Jack Studer, one of the founders of Lamp Post Group, a downtown incubator. Studer raved about the 1 gig network as a selling point to new businesses. Chattanooga's investment continues to fuel economic development and bring fresh entrepreneurs to town.

The story is a little under four minutes.

Cedar Falls Utility Increases Speeds For Free

Posted February 11, 2013 by lgonzalez

Customers of Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU), in Iowa, have recently been treated to an increase in fiber Internet service speeds with no increase in price.

We have reported on CFU for several years with news on its upgrades and expansions to unserved areas. The most popular CFU home service, 12/1 Mbps, is now at 16/8 Mbps. That service is available for a reasonable $43.50 in the city and $48.50 in rural areas. Residential plans range from $29.95/$34.95 (city/rural) for 2/1 Mbps for FiberHome Basic to $137.50/$142.50 (city/rural) for the 120/60 Mbps FiberHome Extreme.

According to the CFU blog:

We’re able to make this upgrade now because we are in the final neighborhoods connecting customers to our new all-fiber cable and internet system. The all-fiber system allows us to deliver faster connection speeds and better reliability. Upgrading speeds now is also good timing because we just activated a new high speed upstream internet link. This high speed link gives us the capacity needed at a very affordable cost, and also provides geographic and provider redundancy. With this in place no single fiber cut, hardware failure or weather event will impact our ability to deliver our normal peak internet usage.

Note that while Cedar Falls has decided not to offer fully symmetric services (same upload as download speed), the ratio is 2:1 rather than the 6:1, 10:1, or even bigger gap that we often see from the national providers. CFU recognizes the benefits of faster upstream connections that allow subscribers to be more productive by being better able to share their creations with the world.

WiredWest Makes Significant Progress in 2012

Posted February 7, 2013 by lgonzalez

We enjoy bringing you news from western rural Massachusetts and the WiredWest Cooperative. We want to share the update on 2012 activities and some of the plans for 2013.

Sixteen new towns became members in 2012, which brings the grand total to 42. Business planning progressed during 2012. From the WiredWest newletter:

Significant work was undertaken in 2012 to enable financing and buildout of the network. That work was made possible by grants from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and the Central Berkshire Fund, in addition to support from donations, Cooperative membership fees, and thousands of volunteer hours.

The group also conducted a market survey in member towns. WiredWest confimed that demand is strong in the region. The organization is using the information to determine what services to offer and to support pro-forma financial statements, developed with help from groups that know the ins and outs of community broadband:

WiredWest has created comprehensive pro-forma financial statements with input from other municipal fiber networks and appropriate financial expertise. The leadership team has met with a number of public and private financing sources and advisers to refine our financing strategy and put the project on track for financing in 2013.

WiredWest also commenced a Support Card Campaign in its member towns. Potential customers, commercial and residential, shared their support and the results will help with network design. The campaign will provide potential funders evidence of interest in future network services. Residents and businesses can still complete a Support Card and are...

UC2B in Urbana-Champaign Tackles Digital Divide With Network Revenue

Posted February 6, 2013 by lgonzalez

The UC2B project broke ground in the fall of 2011 and is a joint effort by the cities of Urbana and Champaign and the University of Illinois. The project is funded with a $22.5 million federal stimulus grant, a $3 million grant from the state of Illinois, and a list of other grants from local agencies.

From the beginning, the project policy board resolved to set aside funding from the network to address the local digital divide. According to a Janelle O'Dea article in the Daily Illini, 2-5 percent of the annual revenue from the network will go into this fund. The policy board is now fielding ideas from the public. There will be a series of community meetings and the first brought several ideas. From the article:

Meeting attendees presented several ideas for how to spend the fund. Some suggested purchasing new computers for resident use and training residents to use computers.

Artice James, president of the Champaign chapter of the National Council of African-American Men, suggested using the funds to provide job training for the installation of fiber optic material to area homes. James said he hoped many of these jobs will employ minority residents.

Alkalimat also commented on the issue of creating permanent jobs for Champaign-Urbana residents. He said he could see potential for creating a group similar to Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

UC2B's approach brings more people to the network in a self-nourishing fashion. The local community knows where the digital divide is in their area. Funding and decisions come from the people who will live with the benefits of the network. UC2B is another example of how local communities can build networks to effectively address the digital divide.

Longmont Soon to Connect Businesses, Residents in Colorado Community

Posted January 30, 2013 by lgonzalez

Readers know we have offered extensive coverage of the publicly owned network in Longmont, Colorado. The utility will soon offer telecommunications services to businesses and residents that are physically located within 500 feet or less of its existing network. At this stage, policies and procedures for the service are being finalized by Longmont Power and Communications (LPC).

We talked with Vince Jordan, LPC's Telecom Manager, who told us the expansion is part of their original business plan. Local establishments are ready to sign up with LPC. Twenty businesses put themselves in the queue within the past month. In addition to industrial and manufacturing companies, healthcare clinics, service industries, and entrepreneurs are waiting to get hooked up. Vince tells us several companies are looking to build data centers now that they will be able to get the bandwidth they need from LPC.

Vince credits LPC's ability to offer great local customer service as another driving factor for the early sign-ups. LPC is developing a fiber hood campaign to determine the locations for the first set of FTTH connections. The campaign, similar to that used by other communities and more recently by Google, will look at residential areas that are located near existing fiber and conduit. Surveys and early sign ups will identify seven fiber hoods.

Longmont's ordinance [PDF] requires customers to cover the cost of running fiber to their homes or businesses. Even though connecting can be pricey, Vince tells us potential customers call him regularly asking when they will be able to get fiber to their homes or establishments.

Many residential inquiries involve home based businesses, but not all. He relays the story of one retired gentleman who is so fed up with sorry service from the incumbents, he is willing to pay anything up to $10,000 to get LPC fiber to his home. We have encountered many instances of crappy customer service from the big boys, leaving us to suspect others share that sentiment.

The Longmont...

Scarlett McGrady Explains Virginia's Wired Road

Posted January 29, 2013 by christopher

The Wired Road is an ambitious fiber optic and wireless project offering Internet access to several underserved areas in rural Virginia. For the 31st episode of our Community Broadband Bits Bits podcast, Scarlett McGrady joins me to discuss its history and impact on the region.

McGrady is the Director of the Grant Community Computing Center [link to Facebook page], which providers a variety of services including computer literacy courses.

The Wired Road has long had gigabit capacity for those who are within range of the fiber optic connections. Anyone who can take a service from the network has to choose a service provider as the network is a pure open access approach: the community-owned network does not offer any services directly to subscribers. Instead, the Wired Road builds the infrastructure to enable independent service providers to offer services.

We discuss the Wired Road and the many ways that rural residents enjoy using the Internet to improve themselves and their businesses. You can find our previous stories about the Wired Road here.

Read the transcript from this show here.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.

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Listen to previous episodes here. You can download this Mp3 file directly here.

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Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Indianola City Owned Network Partners to Encourage Economic Development

Posted January 23, 2013 by lgonzalez

“We want to grow our own new businesses in Indianola, and Simpson College is home to an entire group of potential entrepreneurs who we hope will find support for their efforts here and some day choose to locate their businesses here,” [Jerry Kelly, former Indianola mayor and executive director of the city's development association] said. ‘What we are doing is called ‘economic gardening.’ What grows here will stay here.”

Thanks to the Indianola Municipal Utilities (IMU) next-generation broadband network, the city and the college have fertile soil to nurture that garden. We previously wrote about this FTTH partnership here, explaining that the community owns the infrastructure and a local business provides services over the network.

The partnership between Simpson College, the Indianola Development Association, and IMU is called the Indianola + Simpson College Entrepeneurial Devopment Initiative. The student-business incubator will bring together students, mentors, and existing businesses with the hope that resulting entrepeneurships will sprout and grow in Indianola.

Through the partnership, the incubator will have access to IMU's server platforms, wholesale bandwidth, local marketing and outreach efforts, and customer service activities. 25 students will develop senior Capstone Projects through the initiative. College and city leaders anticipate that number will continue to grow.

The Simpson College News Center also writes that the project will be led by Chris Draper. Draper is associated with Des Moines' Startup City, a technology-based business incubator. Draper is CEO of the first graduate of Startup City, Meidh Tech, which offers property management technology solutions.

“By engaging students in real-world problems, allowing them to own their successes and...

Fact Sheets

Posted January 19, 2013 by ejames

Even as the Internet is changing every aspect of our lives and communities, most Americans are intimidated by confusing jargon and misconceptions about Internet policy. We are developing a series of fact sheets that make these issues understandable to everyone.

We presently have fact sheets from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and other organizations that cover broadband, financing networks, wireless Internet, economic development benefits from community owned networks, and the public savings from community owned networks.

Stay up to date with these fact sheets and other developments in community owned networks, subscribe to our one-email-per-week list. Once a week, we send out an update with new stories and resources.

Frontier Has Failed Rural America

Despite raking in hundreds of millions in government broadband subsidies, Frontier Communications has failed time and time again to bring reliable, high-speed connectivity to the rural communities it serves. Instead of investing in network upgrades, Frontier has neglected its rural infrastructure to the detriment of its subscribers and the company’s own financials, with its worsening service quality paralleling its plummeting stock value. This fact sheet presents evidence of Frontier’s negligence and suggests that rather than continuing to trust Frontier, government officials should look to publicly owned and community-minded providers to connect rural residents, businesses, and institutions.

Frontier Has Failed Rural America [pdf]

The Opportunity of Municipal Broadband

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Community Broadband Bits 28 - Bruce Kushnick

Posted January 8, 2013 by christopher

If you think the United States cannot afford to take a fiber optic cable to just about every home in the country, you might be surprised to find out that we have already paid for it. We just haven't received it. Our first podcast guest in 2013, Bruce Kushnick of the New Networks Institute, explains the $300 billion ripoff.

Bruce and I discuss how the big telephone companies promised to build a fiber optic Internet in return for being allowed to increase their prices. This brings us to Kushnick's Law: "A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today."

The telephone companies raised their prices, but decided to give the proceeds out to shareholders rather than invest in the promised networks. We got higher prices and DSL rather than the fiber optic networks we were promised. Our regulators largely failed us, in part because the only people who pay attention to Public Utility Commissions are the industries regulated by them and the occasional underfunded consumer advocate.

This is a very good introduction to why we all pay far too much for services that are too slow and insufficiently reliable.

Read the transcript from this episode here.