FiberNET, the municipal fiber network serving Morristown, Tennessee, has been serving the community since 2006 with fast, affordable, reliable Fiber-to-the-Home service. FiberNET is one of those networks that quietly went about its business bringing top notch services for residents, businesses, and institutions without a lot of fanfare. If you don’t live or work in the area or follow developments in broadband policy and implementation, you may not be familiar with Morristown’s FiberNET.

Now is your chance to learn more.

The community has produced a short, high-quality film about the network and the many ways it enhances living in Morristown for residents, businesses, and local entities. Business leaders describe how the network has enhanced and advanced their operations. Jody Wigington, who we’ve hosted on the Community Broadband Bits podcast, describes how the schools and local institutions have access to a network to rival any connections available in urban areas.

What’s the best part, in his opinion?

“We’re not-for-profit and locally owned. So FiberNET was built for the people through the vision of community leaders. And remember, FiberNET provides local jobs for the community and our employees are are part of the fabric of life in the Lakeway Region.”

Check it out:

Spanish Fork, Utah, was recently highlighted in a promotional video touting the successes of its municipal Internet service. The video, produced by the trade group Internet Association, is all about economic development and growth -- something this community of nearly 40,000 has seen since the municipality introduced the service back in 2001, and then subsequently upgraded to fiber.

As the mayor of Spanish Fork notes in the video, before the municipality established its own network, incumbent providers wouldn’t invest in broadband infrastructure in the city. Inadequate Internet access would have pushed out businesses in the community. A number of small business owners are featured in the video, and all emphasize how integral high-speed Internet has been not just for orders, but social media promotions.

The video also features U.S. Senator from Utah Mike Lee, who spoke to the business owners in the area. He concluded that an open Internet needs to be supported, not suppressed, by lawmakers such as himself:

“Our biggest most important task as lawmakers is don’t wreck the Internet, don’t interfere with the Internet," Lee said. "Leave it alone, allow it to be what it has been, what has made it such a wonderful thing, which is a free marketplace.” 

Check out the video here:

We spoke to the network director for the municipal, John Bowcut, back in 2015. At the time of the interview, Bowcut said that the ISP had a take rate of about 80 percent, mainly because they were able to keep prices much lower than the incumbent Comcast. You can check out Christopher’s entire interview with Bowcut here.

Sometimes best ideas are brewed up over a pint, and Michaelston-y-Fedw Internet proves that.

A citizen coalition in the 300-person town in Wales, fed up with its crawling 4 Mbps speeds, decided to stop waiting around for fiber to come to them and established their own Community Interest Company (CIC), a UK designation that describes an organization whose primary purpose is community benefit to place it themselves. Entrepreneurial community leaders of Michaelston-y-Fedw hatched the plan in a pub last year, and began it in earnest by establishing their not-for-profit in October 2017.

By the People, For the People

According to the ISPs website, it is the first rural community-built gigabit Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) service in Wales. An interactive map of fiber implementation efforts on Michaelston-y-Fedw Internet’s website shows that a long strip of fiber is already complete, with dozens of premises connected. Thousands of hours of volunteering from locals — school teachers, farmers, retirees, you name it — made the build out possible. They already have around 15 miles of trenches dug.

We’ve covered a previous effort in the UK. A community-oriented provider, Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN, pronounced “barn”), facilitated an effort to lay fiber in agricultural land, often by landowners themselves who, if they decided to volunteer for the dig effort on their property, received B4RN shares.

Besides being a well-executed plan with some top-notch volunteer efforts — including an expert knitter-come-fiber splicer nicknamed the “Splice Queen” for her nimble hand work — the dig represents some strong local self-reliance. It’s rural areas, such as Michaelston-y-Fedw, that often face the choice between either taking swift action or waiting for a provider that may never bring the infrastructure they need.

In...

The City of Westfield in western Massachusetts recently launched a new marketing initiative designed to attract business and promote sustainable growth. The GoWestfield campaign features a website and promotional video that focuses on showcasing the many incentives for businesses that the small city of around 41,500 offers, including an environment where businesses can thrive. As the city points out in the video, one of Westfield’s largest selling points is its high-speed fiber optic Internet network.

Check out the video:

Improvements at Home and the Office

Westfield’s locally owned municipal gas and electric company, Westfield Gas & Electric (WG+E) began using fiber optic connections to monitor substations and municipal facilities about 20 years ago. In 2015, the City launched a fiber optic Internet pilot program to about 300 homes and businesses using the existing network. The public Internet service, dubbed "Whip City Fiber," has since expanded its Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to more neighborhoods and is taking applications in other areas of the city. 

While Westfield hopes that their new fiber network will attract more businesses, their new video highlights how existing local business are already experiencing positive impacts from the fiber. The co-owner of Westfield’s Circuit Coffee, Ted Dobek, said that people can now more easily come work at his coffee shop because his business connects to Whip City Fiber. Similarly, Al Liptak, the lead video producer at Kirby Productions, can now upload content at his studio ten times faster than with his old ISP. The production manager of Advance MFG, Co., Jeff Amanti, also has experienced the benefits, stating that the fiber has greatly helped the rate of data transfer at his precision manufacturing facility.

The GoWestfield Campaign grew as a partnership between the City of Westfield, Westfield Development, Westfield Bank, WG+E, and Whip City Fiber. While the initiative’s intent is to highlight many of Westfield’s...