Community Broadband Media Roundup- December 4

California

Gigabit-speed internet in San Jose? Facebook pilot brings high hopes, despite delays by Queenie Wong, Mercury News

“Facebook is a company that will make money if people are on the internet constantly, and so they’re trying to find a way to get around the cable and telecom company monopoly without going directly to war with them,” said Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Manhattan Beach contemplates municipal broadband service by Mark McDermott, Easy Reader News

The San Francisco Broadband Experiment by Doug Dawson, Pots and Pans

 

Colorado

In Colorado, do more votes for municipal broadband networks mean instant internet access? Not so fast. by John Aguilar, The Denver Post

With Voter Approval for Municipal Broadband, Colorado City Asks Citizens How to Proceed by Tyler Silvy, Gov Tech

Fort Collins broadband plans start to take shape by Nick Coltrain, The Coloradoan

 

 

New York

North Country broadband is a patchwork quilt by Glynis Hart, Adirondack Daily Enterprise

 

North Carolina

Greenlight fuels Wilson’s growth, development by Doug Dawson, The Wilson Times

 

Tennessee

The New Sewer Socialists Are Building an Equitable Internet by Evan Malmgren, The Nation

“I find that infuriating,” Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told news site Next City. “Chattanooga has not only one of the best networks in the nation, but arguably one of the best on Earth and the state legislature is prohibiting them from serving people just outside of their city border.” Even more recently, the Tennessee state legislature passed the Broadband Accessibility Act, effectively a $45 million tax break for private telecoms like Comcast.

Grant funds could expand broadband by Elena Cawley, Tullahoma News

 

General

Whose Internet Is It? by Laurie Stern, Public News Service

Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, says most Americans have only one or two Internet service providers to choose from.

"The official United States policy is that we're supposed to have a lot of competition in telecommunications networks,” he points out. “But every time the state or the federal government try to do something to actually encourage competition, the big cable and telephone companies say, 'Oh, that's not fair. You can't do anything to encourage competition. That would be bad for us.'"

The FCC is Lying When It Claims Net Neutrality Hurt Investment by Karl Bode, DSL Reports

Cooperatives Embrace Fiber Broadband: ILSR Finds 87 Cooperative Gigabit Deployments Nationwide by Joan Engebretson, The Telecompetitor

Telecom and electric cooperatives are playing an important role in bringing high-speed broadband to rural America, according to a new report from the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). Using FCC data, researchers identified 87 cooperative gigabit deployments as of December 2016.

Broadband cooperatives could be the overlooked solution to rural America's internet woes by Jason Shueh, State Scoop

“Over the long term, we will benefit tremendously by switching the big telephone companies like AT&T and CenturyLink out and replacing them with cooperatives in many of these rural areas,” said Christopher Mitchell, the report's author and director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. “Those companies don't want to invest in rural areas and we are over-subsidizing them.”

Investigation of fake net neutrality foes has been stymied by the FCC, New York attorney general says by Eli Rosenberg, The Washington Post

FCC Releases Net Neutrality Killing Order, Hopes You're Too Busy Cooking Turkey To Read It by Karl Bode, Techdirt

How Internet Co-ops Can Protect Us From Net Neutrality Rollbacks by Sammi-Jo Lee, Yes! Magazine

Two, these small operators can protect open internet access from the handful of large ISPs that stand to pocket the profits from net neutrality rollbacks that the Trump administration announced Nov. 21. That’s according to Christopher Mitchell, who is the director of Community Broadband Projects, a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Mitchell, who has been tracking and advocating community-owned broadband networks for a decade, hopes that this will be the moment when people rebel against the administration’s attack on net neutrality and expand rural cooperative and municipal ISPs.

“The FCC is basically taking the regulations off of big companies, but local companies can still offer high-quality internet access at good prices,” Mitchell says.

Column: Municipalize the Internet by Claude Wilson, The Daily Tar Heel

Time to release the internet from the free market – and make it a basic right by Ben Tarnoff, The Guardian

To democratize the internet, we need to do more than force private ISPs to abide by certain rules. We need to turn those ISPs into publicly owned utilities. We need to take internet service off the market, and transform it from a consumer good into a social right.

Save the internet! by Ryan Cooper, The Week

Ajit Pai’s Shell Game by Susan Crawford, Wired