A new company from Colorado has been launched with a mission to test the speed and quality of municipal WiFi networks. Uptown Services of Boulder offers a block-by-block verification that the expensive wireless network you just installed will live up to it's hype. It will be interesting to see how… Continue reading
The Heartland Institute earns major jeers for calling municipal communications networks "a lesson in how governments waste taxpayer money." How little they get it! They don't understand that municipal communications networks lower costs, increase competition, raise speeds, and are an engine of economic development. I suppose we can't expect any… Continue reading
We already mentioned Loma Linda's venture into fiber optics. Now a blogger has crunched the numbers and shown that the project will be fully repaid within 10 years. This says nothing of the indirect economic benefits of such a system either. As much as the established players want to pull… Continue reading
Jacksonville, Florida has been building a large fiber ring to be used for city and other government services. The article, however, drops hints that the city might choose to do an FTTH project, something that would spook BellSouth and Comcast. Could Jacksonville's future hold high-speed broadband that blows DSL and… Continue reading
She's a stay-at-home mom and Illinois' loudest municipal fiber advocate. Meet Annie Collins, chairwoman of Fiber for our Future, the Illinois equivalent of FreeUTOPIA. She's gotten referendums on the ballot twice to get municipal fiber in her town, failing thanks to heavy spending by the incumbent providers SBC and (surprise)… Continue reading
Riverside is the latest city to join almost 300 others in jumping onto the "Municipal" WiFi system. I put that in quotes because it's nothing more than adding another monopoly to the existing landscape, albeit one that will offer a freebie service with ads. It doesn't address concerns about telephone… Continue reading
This roundup at P2PNet gives us the breadcrumb trail leading to the telcos caught with their hands in the cookie jar. In less than a decade, they redefined broadband from 45Mbps to 200K, missed deadlines with no penalties, and grew their profit margins from 12% to over 30%. If this… Continue reading
Reports from the latest WiMax World convention prove what most of us already knew: WiMax is a half-baked technology and nobody knows how long to leave it in the oven. Plenty of hucksters gave their pie-in-the-sky vision of high-speed wireless Internet wherever you go, but there's no finished products to… Continue reading
Japan, Korea, and now Denmark have higher rates of broadband penetration than the US with Japan starting to ramp up an ambitious fiber-to-the-premisis network to stay competitive. While the US share of the world broadband market increased to 36%, we'll be hurting for speed unless we all get onto the… Continue reading
American Fork, which has been operating its own independent municipal broadband service since 2002, has agreed to lease and sell portions of its beleaugered AFConnect service to PacketFront Inc. The city will retain ownership of the fiber network but will place operations in the hands of the Swedish company with… Continue reading