Last week, House Republicans introduced a bill package ostensibly to promote broadband expansion and competition across the country. In reality, the legislation is a wish list of monopoly cable and telephone companies that will protect them from competition and decrease their accountability to the public. It would also ban communities from building their own networks or engaging in public-private partnerships.
Local fishing guides suggest skipjack and shad as the best bait for catching the monster catfish swimming in the muddy waters of Wheeler Lake.
But if you want to reel in broadband hungry subscribers living and working in nearby Morgan or Lawrence County, the Joe Wheeler Electric Membership Corporation (JWEMC) is hoping fiber optic lines and a free Amazon Fire TV Stick will lure subscribers to sign up for the electric co-op’s new gig speed Internet service, FlashFiber.
St. Louis Park (pop. 49,000), a suburb west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, has demonstrated commitment and creativity in bringing broadband access to the region over the last two decades. They’ve done so by connecting community anchor institutions and school district buildings, in supporting ongoing infrastructure via a dig once policy, by working with developers, and by using simple, easy-to-understand contracts to lease extra dark fiber to private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to improve connectivity options for local residents.
For the twelfth episode of our bonus series, “Why NC Broadband Matters,” we’re joined by North Carolina League of Municipalities Chief Legislative Council Erin Wynia to talk about Internet access in the state a full year into the COVID 19 pandemic, and the access gaps experienced in towns across the eastern part of the state.
Erin shares with Chris how a collection of mayors banded together to write to the state’s attorney general, imploring him to look into Suddenlink’s business practices after fielding questions and complaints from residents and businesses about slow speeds, price hikes, and service interruptions.
Three northern Indiana county electric cooperatives have announced construction of brand new Fiber-to-the-Home networks which will bring more competition and high-quality Internet access to almost 25,000 homes and businesses in the state once complete.
Jasper County REMC announced its intentions at the beginning of December last year. Incorporated in 1938, its service territory sits in the northwest part of the state and provides electric service to more than 8,500 members over 1,100 miles of line in Jasper County as well as parts of White, Starke, Pulaski, Porter and Newton counties.
In a recent presentation to ILSR staff, Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative, shared key takeaways from six recent books on monopoly power in the United States. While the books share similar themes — the history of antitrust policy, the impact of monopolies on our everyday lives — each one has a slightly different focus within the American antitrust movement.
This presentation is not meant to be comprehensive and assumes a basic background in monopoly policy discussions. We think all of these books offer important contributions to our understanding of what the problems are and how to deal with them.
Five electric cooperatives in three states have joined forces to form a new broadband co-op with a mission to bring high-speed Internet service to the unserved rural parts of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
The formation of the Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Broadband Cooperatives (VMDABC) was announced at the start of the new year, harkening back 76 years ago when those same three states formed the Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives (VMDAEC) to bring electricity to the rural areas in those states.
“This association is the first of its kind in the nation,” said VMDABC Board Chairman Casey Logan, CEO of the Waverly, Va.-based Prince George Electric Cooperative, and its broadband subsidiary, RURALBAND.
As the COVID crisis swept across Arizona and forced students to attend school remotely last spring, Tucson’s Chief Information Officer Collin Boyce began to look for a way to ensure that the thousands of students who didn’t have Internet access at home wouldn’t be left behind. It's solution has been to leverage city-owned fiber to set up a wireless network to get both students and seniors online so they can learn and visit the doctor remotely.
The Expanding Potential in Communities (EPIC) Grant deadline funded by Truist Bank and administered by the Internet Society has been extended by two weeks from its original deadline of February 19 in the wake of the weather hammering eligible areas over the last few days. There's nothing like a severe winter event that knocks power out for millions to break up the monotony of a raging pandemic.
Grant applications are now due March 5th by 11:59pm.
Read our original story about the grant program below:
Update: The Community Broadband Action Network (CBAN) notes that it looks like SSB 1184 is dead, having been shelved in committee yesterday. They say the "bill was briefly discussed by a subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee on February 16th, but postponed 'indefinitely.'"
Original story:
Less than a year after an attempt to hamstring municipal broadband in Iowa, local opponents are at it again. If you’ve been around the block, Senate Study Bill 1184 will look remarkably similar to SSB 3009 from last January 2020, and that’s because it’s nearly identical.
The conclusion of the RDOF auction was met with a good deal of drama and uncertainty, leaving many of us working after the fact to understand the policy and practical impacts of its outcomes.
This week on the podcast Christopher talks with Jonathan Chambers, a partner at Conexon, a network solutions provider for electric cooperatives around the United States who helped organize a consortium of nearly 100 cooperatives to successfully bid for more than $1 billion in funding from the recent Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Auction administered by the FCC.
There’s more to Nevada than sparkling casinos and vast expanses of arid desert. A six-hour drive north of Las Vegas – about an hour drive east of Reno on I-80 – is Churchill County.
Thanks to an irrigation system fed by the Walker, Truckee, and Carson Rivers, Fallon – the county seat – has long been known as the “Oasis of Nevada,” surrounded by abundant agricultural land with over 600 farms spread across Churchill County’s 5,000 square miles.
In Chanute, the “Hub of Southeast Kansas” named in honor of railroad engineer and aviation pioneer Octave Chanute, the track this small city of approximately 9,100 is on to build its Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network is a long one.
Last week we published a new case study report on four Native Nations (the Coeur d’Alene, the Nez Perce, the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe, and the St. Regis Mohawk) who set out to build their own broadband networks after being left behind for decades by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the region. At the same time, we launched a new resource documenting existing Native Nations Networks with some key resources for others in Indian Country considering their own.
It’s official. Senate Bill 74 became law last week when Governor Asa Hutchinson signed it, significantly reducing (but not completely removing) barriers to municipal broadband in the state of Arkansas, with both chambers voting unanimously in approval of the legislation. While the legislation doesn’t completely eliminate existing barriers to municipal broadband in the state, we consider it an historic moment and a significant step forward.
The central win in SB 74 is that it allows government entities “to acquire, construct, furnish, or equip facilities for the provision of voice services, data services, broadband services, video services, or wireless telecommunications services” so long as they “partner, contract, or otherwise affiliate with an entity that is experienced in the operation of the facilities,” as well as conduct due diligence, and provide ten-days’ notice and hold a public hearing.
