community networks

Obama promotes Internet to infrastructure, skips community broadband details

21 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Some Christmas trees actually have fiber.

The five point plan to promote community broadband announced by U.S. president Barack Obama last week was billed as a prelude to last night’s state of the union address. But he didn’t specifically mention it.

More importantly though, what Obama did in his speech is lump broadband in with traditional infrastructure projects…

Twenty-first century businesses need 21st century infrastructure — modern ports, and stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet.

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Municipal broadband development is a local job, with or without presidential backing

15 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Good words, but no new money.

Community-based broadband networks got a ringing endorsement from U.S. president Barack Obama yesterday. You can watch the speech here, or read the transcript prepared by the white house press office.

The question now is whether the speech kicked off a serious policy initiative or just served as the headline issue of the day. It’s very possible this speech or the upcoming state of the union address will be the last we’ll hear about community broadband from the president until he holds a promised summit meeting with mayors and county supervisors in June, which is 1 of the 5 action items that the white house published on Tuesday and Obama reiterated yesterday.… More

Obama criticises lack of broadband competition in Iowa speech

14 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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U.S. president Barack Obama just wrapped up a 20 minute speech that focused on community broadband. He pretty much stuck to the talking points released by the white house yesterday. He talked about tens of millions of U.S. homes that only have 1 high speed ISP available, if they have options any at all, putting them “at the whim of whatever broadband provider is around”. Obama’s solution is to offer cities technical assistance, implement previously approved rural broadband grant and loan programs, ask the FCC to preempt state restrictions on municipal broadband and telling federal agencies to get rid of unnecessary regulations.

Obama endorses community broadband, tells agencies to support it

14 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full report.

U.S. president Barack Obama plans to use his bully pulpit today to help advance the cause of community broadband. Yesterday afternoon, the white house released a 5 point program to boost local broadband speeds and “support economic growth”, including…

  • Ending state laws that “harm broadband service competition”.
  • Focusing on local leaders, including holding a local broadband summit at the white house in June.
  • Tasking the commerce department with providing technical assistance to local communities that want to develop broadband systems.
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Community broadband gets presidential endorsement when Obama speaks in Iowa tomorrow

13 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Ahead of a speech tomorrow by U.S. president Barack Obama, the white house released a ringing endorsement of community broadband this afternoon, and promised at least administrative and political support for local government efforts to build broadband networks (h/t to Gladys Palpallatoc at CETF for the timely tweet). No new money for construction was include or, indeed, anything that would require the cooperation of the republican majority in congress. But direction to the commerce and agriculture departments to assist local broadband projects will be heard, as will a request to the FCC – which has a democratic majority – to override state restrictions on what local governments will do.… More

There's a point to fast broadband, even when it goes nowhere

28 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Isolated communities – particularly Indian tribes – are experimenting with microgrids that distribute locally generated, renewable electricity to a small number of homes (h/t to Pat Kennedy for the pointer). Can the same logic be applied to community broadband networks in rural areas? Not really, but thinking it through leads to some interesting ideas.

The difference between electricity and broadband is that broadband is necessarily networked and electricity is not. But local storage can substitute for long-haul bandwidth, up to a point – the Tivo model.… More

Drilling down on the digital divide in California's oil towns

3 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Western Kern County is oil country. Once you hit the foothills of the central California coast range, agriculture stops and oil production begins. Several small towns along State Route 33 support the industry and its workers. The largest is Taft, with a city limits population of around 9,000 people in about 2,300 households, plus adjacent unincorporated neighborhoods.

By California Public Utilities Commission standards, nearly all of Taft (and Maricopa to the south) has adequate broadband service: the local cable company, Bright House, offers up to 90 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Tacoma loses money on muni cable, won't go all in on broadband to make up the difference

25 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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Tacoma, Washington has a municipal broadband network that started out offering cable television service and then later added broadband. The system grew out of a fiber network that was originally installed to support the city-owned electric utility.

Called Click, the hybrid fiber-coax system was upgraded to DOCSIS 3 standards a couple of years ago. It competes with Comcast head-on, and with CenturyLink in the broadband space. Like any small cable system, Click has struggled with increasing programming costs.… More

Colorado cities vote for muni broadband, in concept

10 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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If you had to choose a single issue, broadband would have been better.

Besides confounding conventional political wisdom by turfing out an incumbent democrat in favor of a hard-to-pin-down republican, Colorado voters said yes to repatriating municipal broadband decisions in a big way.

Colorado state law requires voters to approve municipal broadband systems – a simple vote by the city council isn’t enough. According to the Washington Post, voters in 7 cities and counties voted to approve it…

In Boulder, locals voted on whether the city should be “authorized to provide high-speed Internet services (advanced services), telecommunications services, and/or cable television services to residents, businesses, schools, libraries, nonprofit entities and other users of such services.”

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Local fiber maps unlock opportunities on California's central coast

6 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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A lot of fiber is installed along California’s central coast. But most of it is locked up by incumbent telephone and cable companies, and not available to local businesses and independent Internet service providers. The Central Coast Broadband Consortium, with a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission via the California Advanced Services Fund, mapped both long haul and local last mile fiber in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties.

Most of the locally accessible fiber is owned by AT&T, Comcast and Charter Communications.… More