Category: Community Broadband

How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks

Frustrated by ever-increasing prices for telecommunication services and the reluctance of incumbent providers to upgrade their networks to meet 21st century needs, more than 150 communities have built their own citywide cable and FTTH networks. Against great odds and in the face of ferocious opposition by the existing telephone and cable companies in the courts, at the legislature, and in the marketplace, the vast majority have succeeded

Rural Broadband Report Q1 2012

Each quarter, Calix shares a snapshot of the previous quarter’s Internet traffic and applications utilization based upon data aggregated from a subset of Compass Flow Analyze deployments at different sized wireline communications service providers serving rural America. For this Q1 2012 snapshot, over 50 service providers from every corner of the U.S. provided data, drawing information from over 100,000 subscriber endpoints. Networks monitored consisted of both copper and fiber access infrastructures, and access technologies deployed in these networks included ADSL2+, VDSL2, GPON, and point-to-point gigabit Ethernet.

State Developments 2011

Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly

By Christopher Mitchell

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is pleased to release the Community Broadband Map and report, Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly. The map plots the 54 cities, big and small, that own citywide fiber networks and another 79 own citywide cable networks. Over 3 million people have access to telecommunications networks whose objective is to maximize value to the community in which they are located rather than to distant stockholders and corporate executives.

State Developments 2010

A ‘Public Option’ for Broadband?

By Mark Sullivan, PCWorld

When it comes to broadband, I’m a socialist. Why? Because broadband service in the United States is currently provided by a cableco/telco duopoly, and, as such, is slower and more expensive than in most of the developed world, studies show. Because I don’t believe the FCC can fix that lack of competition within the current regulatory framework, despite the ambitious goals set forth in its National Broadband Plan. Because a reasonably-priced alternative to cable or telco broadband might be just the thing to bring competition to the industry and spur U.S. broadband cost and quality to world-class levels. Because our connectedness increasingly dictates our our economic standing in the world: Broadband is as important to us as the interstate highway system–a public works project–was to Eisenhower-era America.

The money behind opposition in Congress to reclassification of Internet access as Title II service

Letters from House Democrats and Senate Repbublicans Against the FCC — Sponsored by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Astroturfers?

It’s open season on the FCC’s Broadband plans, from a new proposed bill by Rep. Stearns (FL), or former politicians tied to astroturf groups — Are the phone and cable companies pulling the strings?

To protect the Public Interest, shouldn’t these Senators and Congressmen recuse themselves from voting on issues that directly help their contributors — AT&T, Verizon and Comcast?

European Commission: A Digital Agenda For Europe

The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) aims to reboot Europe’s economy and help Europe’s citizens and businesses to get the most out of digital technologies. It is the first of seven flagships initiatives under Europe 2020, the EU’s strategy to deliver smart sustainable and inclusive growth.

FCC: The Broadband Availability Gap

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act directed the Federal Communications Commission to include, as part of the National Broadband Plan, “an analysis of the most effective and efficient mechanisms for ensuring broadband access by all people of the United States.” As the NBP indicated the level of additional funding to extend broadband to those who do not have access today is $23.5 billion; more detail about the gap and results of this analysis are presented in Chapter 2. This document details the underlying analyses, assumptions and calculations that support the $23.5 billion funding gap.

Breaking the Broadband Monopoly: How Communities are Building the Networks They Need

Across the country, hundreds of local governments, public power utilities, non-profits, and cooperatives have built successful and
sometimes pioneering telecommunication networks that put community needs first.These communities are following in the footsteps of the publicly owned power networks put in place a century before. We watch history repeating itself as these new networks are built for the same reasons: Incumbents refusing to provide service or charging high rates for poor service.

Links to Other Useful Sites

Price of the Pipe

From the New America Foundation

The speed and price of a broadband connection are two important details about a broadband service that vary greatly between different countries. In comparing prices and speeds of broadband services around the globe, we find that the United States is among the most expensive and slowest of the countries surveyed in this report. Price is one of the main barriers to adoption, and prices for broadband in the U.S. are on the rise. Major steps need to be taken to bridge the speed and price disparities separating the U.S. from other industrialized countries.