Episodes

In Tennessee, this month marks 10 years of Morristown Utility Systems delivering fiber-optic triple-play service to the community, including great Internet access. But those living just outside the city and in nearby cities have poor access at best. MUS General Manager and CEO Jody Wigington returns to our show this week and we also welcome Appalachian Electric Cooperative (AEC) General Manager Greg Williams to discuss a potential partnership to expand Morristown services to those that want them...

The American Cable Association (ACA) represents over 800 small and medium-sized cable companies around the United States, including many municipal cable and fiber-optic networks. This week, we talk with ACA President and CEO Matt Polka about what they do and how small cable companies are vastly different from the big companies like Comcast and Charter. We spoke after it was clear Charter's merger with Time Warner Cable would be approved, but before this article in Ars Technica effectively misse...

On the outskirts of Akron, just south of Cleveland, the community of Fairlawn is building a citywide wireless and fiber optic network using an interesting model. Most of the citywide municipal Internet networks in the U.S. have been built by communities with a municipal electric power company. Fairlawn has no such utility, not even a water utility. So they have partnered with another Ohio company, Extra Mile Fiber. This week, Deputy Director of Public Service Ernie Staten joins us for episode 2...

This week, we discuss a report with zero credibility from the State Government Leadership Foundation, which was written by a well-known telco economist from the Phoenix Center. Entitled, "The Impact of Government-Owned Broadband Networks on Private Investment and Consumer Welfare," the report [pdf] makes so many factual errors that one wonders just how much these telco think tanks really take pride in their work. George Ford authored the report. Ten years ago, he demonstrated that municipal net...

When Valparaiso, Indiana looked into solutions for a business that needed better Internet connectivity than incumbent providers were willing to reasonably provide, it quickly found that many businesses were lacking the access they needed. The market was broken; this wasn't an isolated incident. Correction: Lisa misspeaks in the intro, saying Valparaiso is northeast of Chicago. It is southeast. Valparaiso General Counsel & Economic Development Director Patrick Lyp joins us to discuss what Valpa...

When we launched this podcast in 2012, we kicked it off with an interview from Minnesota's farm country, Sibley County. We were excited at their passion for making sure every farm was connected with high quality Internet access. After the project took a turn and became a brand new cooperative, we interviewed them again in 2014 for episode 99, but they hadn't finished financing. They broke ground 2015 and today we discuss the model and the new Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) case study ...

San Francisco is one of the rare cities that has multiple high quality ISPs competing for market share, though the vast majority of people still seem to be stuck choosing only between Comcast and AT&T. This week, we talk to a rising ISP, Webpass, about their success and challenges in expanding their model. Charles Barr is the President of Webpass and Lauren Saine is a policy advisor - both join us for episode 197 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast. We discuss the...

If you are paying close attention to discussions about broadband policy, you may have come across Fred Pilot's reminders that competition is not a cure-all for our Internet access woes across the United States. The blogger and author joins us for episode 196 of Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary]. Fred Pilot's new book, Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis, discusses some of the history behind our current challenges and proposes a solution cent...

In a partnership with the Department of Defense, the city of Montgomery has created Alabama's first Internet Exchange. This week, project manager for Montgomery Cyber Connection, Ben Venable, joins us to discuss this project and the gains the community is already seeing from it. The effort is a true partnership between General Steven Kwast at Maxwell Air Force Base, the city and county of Montgomery, and others like Wide Open West, the nation's 9th largest cable company. WOW!'s network architec...

In Minneapolis, a small and privately owned ISP has been steadily building fiber across the city and developing a stunning reputation for great customer service, low and predictable pricing, and generally being a great company to do business with. Co-founder Travis Carter of US Internet joins us for episode 194 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast. We discuss their approach to building networks, especially their philosophy around customer service and just how poorl...

When we asked Ted Smith, Chief Innovation Officer of Louisville, Kentucky, to join us for episode 193 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] Bits podcast, we expected to talk about the one touch make ready policy they had enacted (and AT&T has since sued to stop). We did, but we ended with a focus on how networking is already improving the city. We start off by focusing on the problem of adding new fiber networks to existing poles (many of which are owned by telephone compan...

This week we welcome Gigi Sohn, Counselor to Chairman Wheeler of the Federal Communications Commission, to Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] for episode 192. Before joining the FCC, Gigi was a founder of Public Knowledge. Gigi discusses the pro-competition agenda that Chairman Wheeler has advanced, including the efforts to ensure communities can decide locally whether to build a municipal network or partner. We also discuss other elements of FCC action to encourage competition...

Last week, we were excited at the announcement from Huntsville Utilities in Alabama. Huntsville is building a municipal dark fiber network to every premise in its territory that will be open to multiple service providers. Google has already committed to using it to bring real connectivity to the community. In this week's episode, 191, we are talking with Tom Reiman and Stacy Cantrell to understand the model. Tom is President of The Broadband Group, the consultant that is working with Huntsville...

For years, many rural communities suffered from a broadband donut hole problem - the investment in better-than-dial-up was in the population center, leaving a donut of poor access around it. Now policy to reverse that in places like Minnesota is perversely creating the opposite problem, to the detriment of the entire community. This week on the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast we welcome back Dan Dorman, Executive Director of the Greater Minnesota Partnership. He is a...

We cover a lot of Tennessee ground in this week's Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast - episode 189 - from a cable network to muni Fiber-to-the-Home; Columbia to Pulaski. Wes Kelley, the Executive Director of the Columbia Power and Water Systems is our guest to talk about Columbia's cable and Pulaski's fiber. He cut his teeth working with a Michigan community's public utility that ultimately decided not to get involved in telecommunications. But he moved on to build out ...

North Carolina is increasingly split between those in urban areas, where some private sector providers are investing in next-generation gigabit networks, and rural areas where the big providers have no plans to invest in modern networks. But coming out of Wilkes County, a cooperative ISP called Wilkes Communications and River Street Networks is taking fiber where the big companies won't. This week, Wilkes Communications and River Street Networks President & CEO Eric Cramer joins us for Communit...

We head directly into the Internet this week with Andrew Blum, author of the book Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. We wrote about it when it was published back in 2012. It is as relevant today as then - buy it from your local bookstore. In our discussion, we talk about the physical infrastructure and geography of the Internet. Blum traveled around the planet, seeking out key Internet locations and exploring how the Internet actually works. We discuss peering, the municipal fiber...

The St Vrain Valley School District, north of Denver and including the Longmont area, is transitioning from a shared gigabit network to dedicated 10 Gbps links for schools. Just what does it do with all that bandwidth? School District Chief Technology Officer Joe McBreen tells us this week in Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast episode 186. We talk about why the need for so much bandwidth and the incredible savings the school district has received from the municipal fibe...

For this week's Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast, we are trying a discussion/debate format between myself, Christopher Mitchell, and Ryan Radia, Associate Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We have debated previously and prefer a style of seeking to flesh out the argument rather than merely trying to win it. We start by discussing the role of incumbents in limiting competition and what might be done about it. Next we move to bandwi...

The Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) has its first local chapter with the formation of CLIC-NC. Catharine Rice, who is both part of CLIC-NC and the Project Director for CLIC, explains what is happening on episode 184 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] Podcast. We remind listeners what CLIC is and the goals of CLIC-NC more specifically. We also discuss the interesting comments of NC Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is both challenging the FCC's authority to remo...

Given all the exciting events of 2015 and our hopes for 2016, we decided to do another year end / year beginning show that looks both backward and forward. Unfortunately, our timing did not allow for Lisa to join us in the recording, but Christopher Mitchell is joined by communications staff at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance -- Rebecca Toews and Nick Stumo-Langer. We talk about what strikes us about the past year and what we expect to be happening in the near future. When I write "we" I ...

As we noted in a preliminary story last week, the city of Lincoln has crafted a collection of conduits allowing greater competition for advanced telecommunications services. As we discuss this week in episode 182 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast, they have also crafted a smart policy to continue expanding the conduit system. To better … Continue reading "Conduits Lead to Competition – Community Broadband Bits Podcast Episode 182"

When Hudson, Ohio, businesses couldn't get the connectivity they needed from the incumbent cable and telephone companies, the local government stepped up to provide what it calls a "service" rather than a "utility." Hudson City Manager Jane Howington joins me this week to explain their approach in Episode 181 of the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast. Hudson has a municipal electric utility already and is now investing in a fiber optic network to connect local businesse...

Eleven months ago, we noted the incredible energy in the Maine Legislature around improving Internet access. Maine State Representative Norm Higgins joins us this week for Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] Podcast episode 180. Rep. Norm Higgins, a newcomer to the Legislature, pushed hard for legislation to encourage municipal open access networks as well as removing barriers to increased investment including a tax on the Three-Ring Binder project. He was part of a large majori...