Thanks to efforts from a few senators, the overhaul of the 1934 and 1996 telecommunications acts is dead in the water. While this would have been beneficial for municipal broadband, the potential negative effects on Net Neutrality would have been much worse. Let's hope the Net Neutrality sections get fixed… Continue reading
This is the first round of letters to County Mayor Peter Corroon and members of the County Council to urge them to put pressure on state lawmakers to change secion 10-18-105 of the Municipal Cable Television and Public Telecommunications Services Act. Feel free to copy/paste and mail your own letter…. Continue reading
Big surprise: cable companies leverage their monopoly status in local markets to increase prices at double-digit rates and keep competition from even getting started. Prescribing a solution to remove control from local communities, however, is very misguided. If Michigan took some cues from Utah, prices could be driven down by… Continue reading
It's not exactly in our neck of the woods, but worth mentioning. Santa Clara University is holding a conference on municipal broadband and is specifically inviting the underserved from Silicon Valley to help formulate public policy on broadband. This sounds like just the kind of thing we need in our… Continue reading
This op-ed piece goes very in-depth on the negative consequences of not having a communications network that's up to snuff. Chicago has lost lots of jobs to more-wired cities like Charlotte, N.C., and Utah's tech-heavy economy could see similar results if we don't pony up for better broadband.
There's a great editorial from the Salt Lake City Weekly slamming Salt Lake City's decision to pull out of UTOPIA while ponying up a mountain of cash for a soccer stadium. Them's some seriously messed-up priorities.
Many industry pundits are hedging their bets on WiMax being The Next Big Thin(TM) in broadband. To hear them tell it, WiMax will make for dozens of competing ISPs with varying prices and speeds and overall lower costs. Not only is this view unrealistic for the technology, but it's unrealistic… Continue reading
It's not surprising to read, but many in rural areas are shut out from high-speed Internet options since most telcos and cablecos refuse to expand there. Oh, they'll line up to the trough for the $2 billion rural telecommunications loan pool, but actually doing something with it is a different… Continue reading
HR 5252 includes provisions to encourage development of municipal broadband, ensure Net Neutrality, and update telecommunications laws to work with VoIP. This summary provides a breakdown of the bill and the great things it will accomplish. Let's write our legislators to encourage support of this bill so that companies like… Continue reading
A group of homebuilders in Wisconsin have sued the city they're building in for asking them to install dedicated conduit for their municipal broadband project. While they claim that it's requiring them to install a non-essential service, access to data over the Internet has rapidly become the one-stop shop for… Continue reading