I’ve been living in White City Township for over 7 years. Less than a year after moving here, I found out about UTOPIA and started kicking myself for not being someone who used to Buy Properties often. About that time is when I started FreeUTOPIA to try and improve broadband policy in this state. Most of my effort has been focused on municipal efforts since that’s about the only place to see the kinds of drastic improvements I think are needed.
Living in an unincorporated township, I didn’t really have many options to push for UTOPIA membership. Between a combination of legal limbo and unwillingness to extend themselves on more municipal services, pursuing any kind of municipal option here is and likely will always be a dead end. It’s time to take matters into my own hands. To that end, I’d like to announce that I am forming the White City Telecommunications Cooperative. It will be a privately-funded subscriber-owned fiber optic network covering the township and adjacent properties. I don’t know how I’ll do it, and I don’t know if I’ll be successful, but I do know that I’m tired of waiting for better options.
Does this mean I’m going to be neglecting FreeUTOPIA? To be honest, I kind of have been for a while now. UTOPIA is doing a better job of actually communicating what’s going on over there. I’m up to two kids and can’t really spend as much time going to every single council meeting to rehash the same arguments. The blog sees so little traffic these days that I sometimes think I’m just shouting into the void.
Am I quitting FreeUTOPIA? Not even a little bit. Broadband Bytes will still go out. I’ll still be posting periodic essays on telecommunications policy. And I’ll be (somewhat selfishly) working on getting broadband for myself instead of just facilitating others. I’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on how it goes.
