This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Justin Holzgrove, Director of Engineering & Utility Services, and Mike Rientjes, Telecommunications Manager, both from Mason County Public Utility District 3 in Washington State. The PUD provides electric service to more than 35,000 households across an area the size of Rhode Island, and began connecting its grid infrastructure to fiber in the late 1990s. Since 2003, it has operated an open access ftth network for households; an endeavor that has sped up since 2015, when residents began clamoring for more. 

Justin and Mike join to talk about how the PUD's efforts have been aided because of the fiberhood model they're using. Once enough households in a region register interest, the PUD's trucks roll into town. Interested homeowners then join those fiberhoods and pay a $25/month construction adder for a period of 12 years - no matter how long a drop their home requires.

The result? Strong word of mouth and indirect marketing have meant some of the highest take rates we've seen on community-owned networks, with an average of 80% across Mason PUD 3's existing service territory, and 100% in some areas. Demand is so strong that the PUD has been working overtime to keep up and deal with supply chain shortages on things like vaults to keep up with the demand.

Watch the video below for more on the history of PUD 3, and the one below that for how the PUD's fiberhood approach works.

This show is 28 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

There are more than 830 electric cooperatives in the United States, serving more than half the country by geography. Electric cooperatives overwhelmingly serve regions that face population density challenges and income disparities as compared to their urban counterparts, as well as all of the other challenges that go with it: declining populations, hospital closures, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and more. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Brian O'Hara, Senior Director of Regulatory Issues for Telecom and Broadband at NRECA, to talk about how more than a quarter of the country's electric cooperatives have answered the call of their members and expanded into Internet service. 

This show is 25 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Will O'Donnell, Broadband and Communications Director at Jefferson County Public Utility District in Washington State, to talk about the Herculean task facing the PUD: how to deploy an open access fiber network to the utility's 21,000 meters in some of the least-dense parts of the state. 

It's a project that will likely cost more than $200 million, but Jefferson County PUD is getting started now. It's using $50 million to reach the first 4,000 households over the next few years, covering miles of coastline and forest from the Hood Canal and Dabob Bay across the peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. Will shares how the combination of federal and state funding, as well as recent legislative changes freeing the PUDs up to offer retail broadband service, turned around local leadership since a 2019 study that showed intractable barriers to success. Now, Jefferson County is moving full-steam ahead. Construction begins later this year, and the PUD plans to operate as an Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the network alongside others. The secret sauce to keeping costs down and being successful? Using tried-and-true, conservative deployment models (at least at first), and a retail plan with managed Wi-Fi at its core to keep costs low and truck rolls to a minimum. 

Residents are already clamoring for the service.

This show is 25 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Marvin Venay is the Chief Advocacy Officer for Tech Goes Home in Boston, a digital equity organization that has been building tech skills and working on the digital divide for longer than most. Sean Gonsalves talks with him about their process, how they continued to thrive even after the BTOP money dried up years ago, navigating the pandemic, expanding further into Massachusetts, and their future plans.

This show is 19 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.

Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD) provides water, wastewater, and Internet service on Bainbridge Island and the neighboring peninsula in the Puget Sound in Washington state. It began building an open access fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in 2016 to address decades of poor DSL service as the only option offered by the private marketplace. Today, the Kitsap fiber network has grown to 500 route-miles and offers service to more than 1,600 premises via almost a dozen ISPs with the help of a growing team. 

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by three members of that team: Allison Cotner (Telecom, Business, and Projects Manager), Stephanie Hall (Telecom, Business Development, and Community Relations Specialist), and Thomas Schreyer (Network Engineer). They share the building momentum in Kitsap County, driven by ever-increasing demand by residents and businesses for the publicly owned fiber network. 

Christopher learns more Kitsap's innovation in using Local Utility Districts to drive expansion, which allows small groups of homes to petition KPUD to extend its network to their neighborhood. More than 50 have formed so far. He also hears about the flexible financing mechanisms the PUD and local government have created for households to foster expansion, and how happy residents are to see trucks in the area. Increased revenue has driven more investment in infrastructure to reach new households and new LUDs, which has meant more and more work for Stephanie and Thomas as they continue to build relationships with the local chamber of commerce and make sure that the network can sustain that growth far into the future.

Watch the video below to learn more about the expanding KPUD Fiber.

This show is 29 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Brandon Forester is the National Organizer for Internet Rights at Media Justice. We talk about organizing for digital equity and more specifically Brandon's vision for communities having agency over how technology shows up in their neighborhoods and digital communities. We discuss how Media Justice came to prioritize prison phone justice, what organizing is and how local solutions may differ in different communities, and the need to avoid purity politics in doing this work. 

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Angela Siefer (Executive Director, National Digital Inclusion Alliance) and Matt Larsen (CEO, Vistabeam) to talk about connecting the unconnected and doing digital equity work as a small Internet Service Provider (ISP). They talk about creating a culture of inclusion inside and out and working with local communities to get the most value out of every dollar. In a marketplace that heavily favors the largest cable and telephone providers, Angela and Matt share the ways that they participate in grant programs and how they actively build peer networks to exchange knowledge and make sure the Internet works for as many of us as it can.

This show is 34 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Laura Breeden, board member of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, joins us to talk about the beginning of NDIA - which happened in a bar among friends, along with most other good ideas. We also talk about what progress has been made on digital inclusion and reflect on some of the deeper history of the Internet and digital inclusion, going back to the early 1990's. 

This show is 17 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.

It's strange to see the FCC continually patting itself on the back for releasing a new national broadband map. Spend just a little bit of time with it, and the cracks and holes quickly show themselves. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Christine Parker, Senior GIS Analyst at ILSR, and Alexis Schrubbe, Director of the Internet Equity Initiative at University of Chicago. They do a deep dive into the many, many problems that persist - from bad ISPs claiming service to locations where they have no presence, to missing locations, to the mountain of work the FCC has offloaded onto the rest of us in fixing a map that it paid a lot of money to assemble. 

Christopher, Alexis, and Christine also untangle the ongoing challenge process for unserved, underserved, and served locations, and the timeline that states have in preparing to subgrant hundreds of millions in BEAD dollars starting in 2024. It's not all bad news - they end the show by talking about what state broadband offices, individuals, nonprofits, and others can do to band together, find good partners, and make sure their community gets counted in our national broadband service census.

This show is 38 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Ini Augustine is a technologist who was ready to organize with her community to improve access to computers and Internet access when the pandemic hit and many low-income neighborhoods in Minneapolis and Saint Paul were cut off from education and other resources. More recently, she organized the Black Broadband Summit and the Family Broadband Coalition. We talk about her work and the promise and challenge of forming a cooperative to bring better Internet access to people who have been abandoned by traditional business models.

We also talk about whether kids in North Minneapolis would be in better shape today than they were in 2020 if they suddenly were cut off from school again. And who should be taking responsibility to make sure that answer is yes?

Her work has been featured in Minnesota Public Radio as well as Sahan Journal. Follow their progress on Instagram as well - Project Nandi.

This show is 15 minutes long and can be played on this page or using the podcast app of your choice with this feed.

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or see other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Joseph McDade for the music. The song is On the Verge and is used per his Free-Use terms.