White House Launches ‘Smart City’ Initiative That Links Broadband Connectivity to Urban Solutions

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By Drew Clark

WASHINGTON, September 16, 2015 – A movement to make cities smart by using the power of broadband and information technology processing power is reaching critical mass, with the White House on Monday announcing a comprehensive initiative to support municipal efforts.

Coinciding with the Smart Cities Week conference here this week, the White House released a 4,000-word summary of more than $160 million in federal research investments, leveraging more than 25 technology collaborations with local communities.
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Study finds EPB fiber optics generates over $865 million in benefits for Chattanooga

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by Dave Flessner
EPB

EPB (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new study suggests that EPB‘s fiber optics has helped generate at least 2,800 new jobs and added $865.3 million to the local economy by cutting power outages, improving Internet links and attracting businesses to the “Gig City.”

The study by University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Economist Bento Lobo found that since its introduction six years ago today, EPB’s smart grid and first-in-the-nation citywide gigabit Internet service has helped local education, health care, business, arts and culture and municipal services. The smart grid is estimated to have avoided 124.7 million customer minutes of interruptions by better detection of power faults and better methods of rerouting power to restore service more quickly than in the past. Continue reading

Lexington Goes for a Gig

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By Masha Zager / Broadband Communities
A view of Keeneland's grandstand at dawn, take...

A view of Keeneland’s grandstand at dawn, taken from the last turn leading into the home stretch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The city of Lexington, Ky., is famous for its beautiful horse farms and historic bourbon distilleries but not for its broadband. Internet service there could fairly be described as mediocre – the Internet metrics company Ookla recently measured the average download speed in Lexington at 16.2 Mbps, well below the U.S. average of 37.1 Mbps.

On the other hand, unlike some other cities that have launched FTTH initiatives, Lexington isn’t precisely underserved. There is no groundswell of community outrage about broadband. But Jim Gray, the city’s mayor, believes better broadband will give the city a better future, and he vowed to make Lexington a gigabit city. “Every city is in a competitive chase for talent and investment and jobs,” he explains. “This is essential just to stay competitive.” Continue reading

Verizon Gets Slapped by New York City Mayor

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English: Verizon Building in New York City

English: Verizon Building in New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Daniel Cooper | @danielwcooper | June 19th 2015 At 11:00am

Way back when, Verizon pledged to build fiber optic services to every home in NYC, but for some reason, it never got around to finishing it. Unfortunately, New Yorkers are used to getting what they want, and so Mayor Bill de Blasio has slammed the company saying that it needs to sort out the problem, or else. The city has delivered Big Red a very public ultimatum: Either it brings its FiOS network to “every household” in the five boroughs, or it’ll face some heavy penalties.

The saga began back in 2008, when the city agreed that Verizon could operate a local cable TV franchise in exchange for a fiber optic network. The deal was that every person in NYC that wanted super-fast broadband would be able to get it by June 30th, 2014. Naturally, the overwhelming number of consumer complaints prompted the mayor’s office to conduct a full investigation into what the hell was happening. Continue reading

Almost Half of World’s Population Will Be Online By December

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International Telecommunications Union, Geneva.

International Telecommunications Union, Geneva. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has revealed 3.2 billion people will be online by the end of this year, with two billion of those in the developing world.

However, four billion of the world’s population will still be offline, which represents two thirds of the people living in those areas. Continue reading

The Latest Big Cable Consolidation Will Screw Consumers and Startups

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Get a Clue

Get a Clue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This article is a bit late, but the subject is still pertinent. These technology bloggers do not have any idea of how the communications industry operates. It really doesn’t matter if companies consolidate across geographical boundaries because the companies are not competing against each other in the first place. The number of choices that a consumer has remains constant in this transaction. The premise of this article is flawed, but coming from Gawker Media it is no surprise.

I find it ironic that the author complains of not enough competition then lauds efforts by the government to get into the business which is the ultimate monopoly. These kiddies think that the government will solve all of their problems while in reality they care even less about service quality and customer service than commercial service providers. I totally agree that more competition will be health for consumers but stopping this transaction will not do anything to improve that situation.

Adam Clark Estes-, Gawker Media May 27, 2015, 02.00 AM IST

America woke up to some frustrating news today. Charter, the fourth-largest cable company in America, wants to buy Time Warner Cable, the second-largest, as well as Bright House, the tenth-largest. If the deal goes through it’s going to affect come 23 million internet customers directly. Not in a good way.

Major cable mergers like this one and, like the failed Comcast acquisition of Time Warner Cable, stand to further wreck the already terrible state of America’s broadband.
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Longmont’s NextLight fastest Internet service in U.S. – Times-Call

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Although Longmont now claims to have the speediest Internet service in the U.S., mine isn’t that bad considering I am on Comcast just a few miles outside Longmont’s city limits and paying about the same as the NextLight service. This just goes to show that a real competitive market will drive all players to improve for the benefit of the consumer.

By Karen Antonacci
Staff Writer

Longmont Power & Communications’ NextLight Internet service is the fastest in the country, according to speed testing company Ookla.

Ookla, based in Seattle, owns SpeedTest.net, and has previously licensed its Internet testing technology to the Federal Communications Commission when the FCC wanted to build its own application.

In late April, NextLight was listed as the third-fastest in the United States, behind Google Fiberand Washington-based iFiber Communications. While the rankings may change due to companies’ varying speeds, as of press time Monday, NextLight was in the number one slot. Continue reading