The 2016 Broadband Communities Summit will be held on April 5 - 7 in Austin, Texas. Participants can save $540 by registering early before November 30th. Register online and use the VIP Code: Austin2016 to get a special rate of $410.

The annual Summit is one of the premier broadband events each year. This year, the theme is Fiber: Catch The Wave! Check out the Summit main page for more about the agenda, speakers, and workshops. The event page will be updated as organizers solidify the agenda.

Don't delay! Register before Monday, November 30th!

The 2015 Broadband Communities Summit is scheduled for April 14 - 16 in Austin, Texas. When you book your flight and reserve your room, plan on coming a day early so you can take advantage of the is year's special pre-conference event. The Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) will offer a full day's agenda on the politics of local Internet choice on Monday, April 13.

Chris will speak at both events. As Senior Advisor to CLIC, he will be speaking on Monday to CLIC pre-conference attendees and then addressing economic development at the Broadband Communities Summit on Tuesday, April 14. The Summit Agenda at a Glance is now available to view.

For a limited time, CLIC members can register online for the CLIC program for $125 and attend the entire Summit for free. Choose the CODEHOLDERS button and enter the code CLIC125 to receive the special rate.

(Pssst! This is an awesome deal! You save $895!)

The 2014 Broadband Communities Summit is scheduled for April 8 - 10 in Austin, Texas.

Chris Mitchell will be speaking at 3 p.m. on April 8 during the Economic Development Program as part of the talk titled "Economic Development: The Killer App." Chris will be back on April 10th to speak during the Rural TeleCon segment. He will present information on the state of broadband in regions that continue to struggle with connectivity. The "Envisioning a Future for Broadband Deployment" panel from 11:00 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. CST.

Other panel discussions in the Rural TeleCon segment will be:

• The Bandwidth of the States: Where They Stand in 2014 (a quick review of broadband in all 50 states as stimulus projects roll out)
• Financing Future Bandwidth
• Disruptive Technology Is Spurring Learning In the Classroom
• Measuring Prosperity from Rural Broadband Utilization
• Cool Things Rural Communities Are Doing With Broadband

You can view the entire summit agenda online, review details about free workshops, and plan your trip. You can also register online for the event, to be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin.

Lo and behold, right in the thick of the CBS-Time Warner fight, I received notices from AT&T that Uverse was now available in my neighborhood. This is something I’ve waited more than two years for. I was thrilled. Finally, there’s choice! Since receiving my first notice from AT&T in early August, I’ve been inundated with AT&T offers. Dozens of pieces of mail have arrived in my mailbox. Clearly, AT&T wanted my business. And I wanted badly to give it to them. I phoned one day after receiving my first notice. I signed up immediately for service. The friendly sales person told me because of high demand, she couldn’t set an installation date for sooner than two weeks. Whatever. Fine. We agreed on August 19, somewhere between 9 and 11 a.m. I couldn’t wait.

Austin, Texas, with a little over 820,000 people, is home to several centers of higher ed, the Southwest Music Festival, and a next generation network known as the Greater Austin Area Telecommunications Network (GAATN).

It was also the second metro area selected by Google for the Google Fiber deployment. But before they got Google Fiber, a local partnership had already connected key community anchor institutions with limitless bandwidth over fiber networks. The network measures its success in terms of cost avoidance, and averages out to a savings of about $18 million per year combined for its 7 member entities.

In 2011, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) named GAATN the Community Broadband Organization of the Year. Today, GAATN also serves the  City of Austin, the Austin Indepedent School District (AISD), Travis County, local State of Texas facilities, Austin Community College (ACC), the University of Texas at Austin (UT), and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA).

GAATN's bylaws prevent it from providing service to businesses or individual consumers. Texas, like 18 other states, maintains significant barriers that limit local public authority to build networks beyond simply connecting themselves. As a result, local entities must tread lightly even if they simply want to provide service for basic government functions.

Provo started building their own municipal network in 2004 because they decided that providing access to high speed connectivity was important to their community’s future. In 2011, they started looking for a partner that could acquire their network and deliver an affordable service for Provoans. We’re committed to keeping their vision alive, and, if the deal is approved and the acquisition closes, we’d offer our Free Internet service (5 Mbps speeds) to every home along the existing Provo network, for a $30 activation fee and no monthly charge for at least seven years. We would also offer Google Fiber Gigabit Internet—up to 100x faster Internet than today’s average broadband speeds—and the option for Google Fiber TV service with hundreds of your favorite channels. We’d also provide free Gigabit Internet service to 25 local public institutions like schools, hospitals and libraries.

Chip Rosenthal headed the grass roots effort to bring Google’s gigabit fiber network to Austin, and he says the Texas capital was on the short list of cities that received a site visit and were in the final rounds. Unfortunately for Austin (and me since I’d be happy to plug into a fiber-to-the-home network) Google passed over the city and chose Kansas City, Kan. instead. Rosenthal, who is one of seven commissioners on the City of Austin’s Technology and Telecommunications Commission (a strictly advisory body), thinks it’s because Texas is one of four states that forbids municipalities from getting involved in building networks.