Community Broadband Media Roundup - September 4

Colorado

Boulder Valley school board eyes putting broadband question on November ballot by Amy Bounds, Daily Camera

 

Kentucky

Kentucky is building a statewide middle mile network.

Kentucky Moving Forward With Effort to Expand Broadband In Rural Areas by Allison Crawford, WKMS

Kentucky Wired broadband internet project announced in Hazard by Tanner Hesterberg, WYMT-TV

Kentucky state, local leaders kick off pioneering broadband-access initiative by Paul Wesslund, Louisville Business First


Maryland

New city Broadband Coordinator Hardebeck: Municipal broadband a 'distinct possibility' by Rick Seltzer, Baltimore Business Journal

What pieces can Baltimore use to build better broadband? by Rick Selzter, Baltimore Business Journal

 

Massachusetts

Why doesn’t Cambridge, Mass., have a next-generation network? by Saul Tannenbaum / Cambridge Broadband Task Force

 

Missouri

Letter from Langdon: The Co-Op Model by Richard Oswald, The Daily Yonder

 

North Carolina

City council candidates weigh future of city’s fiber optic network by Josh Bergeron, Salisbury Post

City-run ISP makes 10Gbps available to all residents and businesses by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica

“We knew to be competitive we needed faster Internet," Winrich said. "We went to the incumbents [in 2009] and asked them if they had any plans to make a faster network and they said, ‘no,’ We went back to them and said, ‘well, if we pay you will you do it?’ They said, ‘no.’ We had to end up building our own because the incumbents had no plans on increasing the speeds of the network.”

This North Carolina City Offers Ultrafast Internet As an Alternative to the Usual Options by Lily Hay Newma, Slate

Salisbury, N.C.'s Fibrant lights 10G FTTH network by Sean Buckley, Fierce Telecom

City to connect departments with fiber optic links by Wesley Young, The Winston-Salem Journal

 

Pennsylvania

Ideas Worth Stealing: Can municipalities build better broadband networks? by Irina Zhorov, Newsworks

 

Tennessee

Matthew Friedman: Cable companies put before Tenn. citizens by Matthew Friedman, KnoxNews

It's time for Tennessee to stop doing the telecom industry's dirty work. It's time for the state to start favoring its own citizens over Comcast, Charter, AT&T and the rest of that lot.

How blazing Internet speeds helped Chattanooga shed its smokestack past by Marguerite Reardon, C-Net

Chattanooga's transformation has been decades in the making, but the construction of one of the largest and fastest Internet networks in the Western Hemisphere will be key to helping the city write the next chapter for the 21st century. 

 

Washington

Socialist councilmember Sawant calls for a new tech revolution by Drew Atkins 

To Sawant and her allies at the advocacy organization Upgrade Seattle, the solution is to create a city-owned broadband Internet utility, as Seattle once did for electricity. This municipal network would utilize and expand the city’s existing fiber network, bringing gigabit speeds to homes and businesses across the region. In the process, Sawant says, service would improve, low-income areas would receive infrastructure upgrades, and the city would push Comcast and CenturyLink from the equation, demonstrating to the rest of America that telecom giants could be beat at their own game.

Q&A: Councilmember Sawant on public broadband and a socialist Microsoft by Drew Atkins, CrossCut [if we publish the first one we should publish this too]

Tacoma Officials Wrestle With The Future Of The City's Broadband Service, Click Network by Ashley Gross, KPLU

 

General

The Connect America Fund Dilemma, Pots and Pans

But the real dilemma comes in how this affects rural communities that are looking at their own broadband solutions. Most of the DSL built under the Connect America Fund is going to 10 Mbps or less download speeds, something that is not even broadband by the FCC’s definition. And not every customer in these areas will get that much speed – many of them are going to live at the ends of the new DSL routes and will still get very slow speeds.

Making it in to the gigabit winner’s circle by Craig Settles, OSP magazine