Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
florida
Content tagged with "florida"
Community Broadband Bits 5 - Catharine Rice of SEATOA
Community Broadband Bits 4 - Kevin Kryzda, CIO of Martin County, Florida
Greenacres Florida Connects to Palm Beach County Network
In June, the city council of Greenacres, Florida, voted to invest $42,550 to connect to Palm Beach County's fiber-optic network. Greenacres joins a growing list of Palm Beach County municipalities who have data-transmission agreements with the County. Other towns include Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Juno Beach, West Palm Beach, Delray Beach and Riviera Beach.
Willie Howard of the Palm Beach Post covered the Greenacres story earlier this month:
Instead of paying AT&T and Comcast $33,360 annually for transmission lines, the city will pay Palm Beach County $8,400 annually.
"It's basically cost sharing as opposed to revenue generating," said Mike Butler, director of network services for Palm Beach County. "We're not in it to make money."
Thomas Hughes, Finance Director of Greenacres, estimates the savings to the City will amount to $124,800 over five years.
In addition to saving money, Greenacres will have the advantage of increased speed. Currently, AT&T and Comcast provide a 1.5 Mbps connections. The new arrangement will provide 10 Mbps from the County - six times faster at a little more than one third the cost. The City can also feel good about keeping the dollars local and will avoid the uncertainty in dealing with remote and giant AT&T or Comcast.
Palm Beach County sits just south of Martin County, where a municipal network saves the County and school district significant dollars for connectivity. You can download our recent case study on Martin County, Florida Fiber: How Martin County Saves Big with Gigabit Network, to learn more about that network.
Florida County Saves Millions by Building its own Broadband Network
Gig.U Advances in Florida With Gainesville Regional Utilities
We have been following the Gig.U initiative, the collaborative effort between 30+ U.S. leading research universities. Their mission is to quicken the deployment of high-speed networks to universities and their surrounding communities to improve innovation, research, collaboration, and economic development. This week, the University of Florida announced they will be working with Gainsville's GRUCom, and GigU to bring fiber to homes and businesses near the Gator campus.
The area, known as Innovation Square, is a 12-block area between the UF campus and downtown Gainesville. The initiative will offer connections to residences for an introductory price of $99 plus tax. Connections within the district will be as fast as 1 Gps while connections to users and websites outside the network will be 50 Mbps. Business rates will be determined on a case-by-case basis. While the gigabit connection may be too expensive for many in the area, the infrastructure will be in place when gigabit costs drop.
From the University of Florida News:
“Entrepreneurs and technology leaders work in a competitive world where big ideas and enormous amounts of information need to move quickly,” [UF President Bernie] Machen said. “This is just what’s needed to attract those types of people to the Innovation District. Having a high-bandwidth community near our campus creates an environment that will better serve the mission of educating our students and creating a hub of high-tech economic growth for Florida.”
GRUCom is the telecommunications division of Gainesville Regional Utilites, owned by the City of Gainesville. In addition to providing telecommunications services, the utility supplies electricity, natural gas, water and wastewater services to 93,000 retail customers in the area. The GRUCom network includes 375 miles of fiber in and around Gainesville and delivers Internet, data transport, colocation, cellular carrier and wireless, and public safety radio services.
UPDATE:
GRUCom informs us that the fiber build out will belong to GRU and the City.
Florida Pro Corporate Group Argues for Less Broadband Competition
The Coalition for the New Economy — which works to ensure “that investments in broadband networks are used efficiently and effectively”— wrote Tuesday that “funding for government-owned broadband networks is very often duplicative,” and “diverts local funds from public safety and education. ... Christopher Mitchell of Community Broadband Networks tells the Independent that official U.S. government policy believes “we can have proper competition if every competitor builds their own network, and that is not at all supported by reality.”This group is emphatically supporting less competition because the private sector does not want to overbuild other private networks. If the public is not allowed to build next-generation networks where private companies already operate last-generation networks, communities will have neither modern connections nor real choices. The cable and DSL companies are arguing that no one should be allowed to build public interstates where private dirt roads exist. We live in a democracy. We are supposed to be free to choose the best policies in promoting infrastructure. We can choose a future where we are more dependent on a few absentee massive corporations or one in which we have more control over our future. We can pursue policies that would result in real choices among broadband service providers or we can continue the status quo, where choices dwindle. Below, I have included an excellent debate from last year in which the above points are fleshed out over 2 hours.
Despite Delays, Dunnellon Builds Muni Fiber in Florida
The installation delay has put the city in a pinch with its lender, Regions Bank.
The Broadband Jungle of Marketing, Hype, and Lies in Volusia, Florida
Martin County Explores Uses for Network It is Building
Martin County, Florida, is building a county-owned network (that we wrote about back in September) in response to gross overcharging by Comcast for the connections they need to connect their City Departments.
The County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to allocate $100,000 to pay experts to advise county officials about ways the new broadband network the county government is constructing could be used to generate revenue as well as promote economic development and job creation.
...
Precision Contracting Services of Jupiter started construction on the $4.2 million network in January and is expected to finish the project by January 2012. The network is expected to serve 280 government, public safety, educational and health care organizations.
Having committed to building a network to meet their own needs, they are now searching for ways to leverage that investment to best meet community needs. They will evaluate laws, conduct a survey of residents and businesses to find what their needs/desires are, and possibly develop a business plan.
Last Monday, the day before the planned vote, a Comcast regional VP had the gall to ask the County Commissioners to delay their vote. No thanks Comcast, these folks have waited long enough for the broadband they need, that you have no interested in delivering in a timely nor affordable manner. On Tuesday, the Council voted unanimously to approve the contract.
Good for them.
Sarasota, Florida, Recognizes Need for Better Broadband
The report lays out a range of options for the city: from doing nothing and letting the market determine Sarasota's broadband future; to partnering with a private entity in building a network that would increase speeds; to tapping a public project already in the works that could create a powerful Internet backbone between Manatee and Sarasota counties.We recently reported on another community, Dunnellon, that is building a community fiber network. Unfortunately, these communities have to deal with unnecessary barriers created by the Florida Legislature as they invest in the future of their community. Photo used under Creative Commons License, courtesy of 83d40m