Telecom reps offer testimony at rural broadband hearing

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Editorial: There is no question that opening up spectrum for rural access will help create more broadband access competition.  The problem is that they are still working within the current duopoly business models and regulatory structures.  Rural access will benefit from economies of scale.  If towns and counties build a common fiber infrastructure and lease it to the communications providers, then the economics of building rural wireline networks greatly improves.

Testimony

Mark Meyerhofer, the director of government relations for Time Warner Cable’s Western New York office, delivers testimony during the rural broadband field hearing. Meyerhofer testified that geographic isolation and topographic issues make it economically infeasible for Internet service providers to reach many rural areas.

Posted: Friday, March 21, 2014 12:00 am
By Jim Krencik [email protected]

ALBION — Congress came to Orleans County Thursday, as a field hearing called by Rep. Chris Collins drew testimony on rural broadband from national, regional and community-level telecommunications firms.

The House Small Business Subcommittee hearing held in the Orleans County Legislative Chambers lacked the scale of a full Congressional panel, but not in importance.

Representatives of Time Warner Cable, Frontier Communications and Rural Broadband Association offered testimony on FCC regulations, service expansion challenges and the industry’s future opportunities.

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Mayors: Every classroom needs Wi-Fi

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Highlighting Broadband Access at Kent Island H...

Highlighting Broadband Access at Kent Island High School (Photo credit: MDGovpics)

Editorial:  The USCM is asking the federal government to address a local problem unless they would like a federal takeover of education like Common Core has started.  Education is a local issue and should be addressed at the local level just like broadband access.  The mayors state that broadband access is just as important as a “chalkboard and textbooks” but the federal government doesn’t purchase those supplies either.  School districts should work with their city and county governments that grant franchises to telephone and cable companies to provide inexpensive broadband access to schools.  Instead of continuing the outdated concept of Community Access Channels, they should redirect that money to low-cost educational access.  Another alternative would be to build their own municipal broadband infrastructure, and build in the cost of educational use into the least price of the network.  There are several solutions that municipalities can implement without resorting to asking the FCC to add another tax on communication services.

A group of mayors is urging the Obama administration to bring high-speed Internet to more schools and libraries around the country.

Students at every U.S. school should have access to Internet speeds of 100 megabytes per second right now, and one gigabyte per second by 2017, the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The mayors also called for each classroom to have Wi-Fi connectivity. 

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Amid political pressure, FCC to propose Net neutrality fix

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  Marguerite Reardon
by  | February 11, 2014 3:33 PM PST

FCC Commissioners in 2014

As politicians put on the pressure, Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler says he’s about to reveal his plan for keeping the Internet open for everyone.

On Monday during a speech at the University of Colorado Law School, Wheeler said that the FCC, which suffered a legal defeat last month when a federal appeals court threw out its Open Internet rules, is working on a plan that will re-instate Net neutrality protections. Wheeler indicated that the agency was encouraged by the court’s decision, which rejected the regulation on a legal technicality, but upheld the agency’s authority to regulate broadband networks to encourage adoption and investment. He said details would be made public soon.

“In its Verizon v. FCC decision, the Court of Appeals invited the Commission to act to preserve a free and open Internet,” he said. “I accept that invitation, and in the coming days, I will be outlining how I propose to proceed.”

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Broadband access gap in Iowa shrinking: Connect Iowa

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Internet Access Here Sign

Internet Access Here Sign (Photo credit: Steve Rhode)

I am personally delighted to see my home state of Iowa increasing broadband penetration.  Like any big data gathering project, the results are only as good as the data put into the database.  I believe that some providers are a little over optimistic on their service availability especially just outside of metropolitan areas.  I honestly think that there are more than 2.3% of the households that are not served by wired Internet.  Just look at the number of households in Warren county outside of Des Moines with no service.  The next step should be to improve the quality of data.  In any case the numbers are very high which for a state that has very long loop lengths area-wise.

New research unveiled today by Connect Iowa shows that the broadband availability gap in the state is shrinking, with 93.5% of Iowa residents now having access to fixed broadband of 3 Mbps download or higher, compared to 92.5% last year.

Nonprofit Connect Iowa has been working since 2009 to ensure that Iowans have access to the economic, educational, and quality of life benefits derived from increased broadband access, adoption, and use.

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Hundreds facing financial losses from MN muni-broadband network

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Lake Maria State Park, Monticello, MN

Lake Maria State Park, Monticello, MN (Photo credit: PugnoM)

By Tom Steward | Watchdog Minnesota

Bill McKenzie’s email was short and to the point.

“I am (an) individual bondholder.  Why doesn’t the city go to the reserve funds and pay the bond interest due on these bonds?  You are hurting bondholders who loaned the city this money,” McKenzie wrote in frustration.

The plea went out last week from the 70-year-Tucson retiree who with his wife lives more than 1,700 miles from the Monticello, Minn., City Council members he attempted to contact.

City officials’ response?  No reply— same as before, he said.

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Wyoming Town Creates Broadband Bonanza

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How does a town of 5000 people in a sparsely populated region get its own fiber-to-household broadband system — WITHOUT relying on federal funding? Powell, Wyoming, is one of the great broadband success stories of the decade.

By Craig Settles

Powell, Wyoming, at first glance may appear to be the typical rural community that large and even some small broadband service providers avoid. The town has just over 5,000 residents in a county with a population density of four people per square mile. The last place for a fiber network, right? Wrong! Powell’s community-owned network, Powellink, is one of the great success stories in broadband.

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AT&T, cable lobbying drive Chattanooga’s EPB to shelve network expansion bill

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Market Square in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, ...

Image via Wikipedia

By Sean Buckley

EPB, the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based service provider known for its 1 Gbps service, and its supporters have decided to put on mothballs a new bill that would enable municipal broadband operators to expand outside of their service areas.

If the “Broadband Infrastructure for Regional Economic Development Act of 2011” bill had gone through, municipal-run broadband providers like EPB would have been able to extend service up to 30 miles outside their service areas. One of EPB’s motivating factors to have the bill was to bring service to Bradley County, where Amazon.com is building a second distribution center.

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