Tag: Broadband Internet access

Small companies doing big job of delivering broadband

  By

This map shows the incorporated and unincorpor...

Image via Wikipedia

By Michael Pollick & Doug Sword
Staff Writers

Until recently, Internet providers like Myakka Technologies were the low men on the totem pole.

Based in the unincorporated eastern Manatee County community of Myakka City, which has no stoplight to its name, this little company has only been able to exist because the big players — Verizon, Comcast and Bright House — had no interest in providing high-speed Internet service to the low-density rural byway.

Continue reading

Come on baby, light my fiber

  By


San Luis Obispo de Tolosa Mission, CA
Image by Michael D Martin via Flickr

A fiber-optic project could be the first step in connecting SLO County to ultra high-speed broadband

BY MATT FOUNTAIN

When Google announced in February 2010 that it was launching a competitive experiment to bring ultra high-speed broadband networks to a small number of trial locations throughout the United States via fiber-optic lines, its intention wasn’t to break into the service-provider business.

The Internet-search giant was attempting to promote awareness of high-speed fiber, test new ways to build fiber networks, and explore the creative potential ultra-high-speed Internet service carries for developers and consumers—the potential, for example, to create new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services and other uses not yet imagined.

Continue reading

Iowa: Study: A third of households lack broadband

  By

For some reason I seem to know many people in Iowa that are the 5% that do not have access to broadband.  I assume that satellite access was included in this study.  Penetration would be much less if satellite was not included.

95% have access to some form of high-speed Internet, but some don’t want it, say it’s too expensive or don’t have a computer.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CEDAR RAPIDS — A new study prepared in cooperation with the Iowa Utilities Board found that one-third of Iowa households don’t have broadband service, but not entirely because of a lack of access.

The study, released Wednesday, found that 95 percent of households do have access to some form of high-speed Internet, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids reported.

Among households that don’t subscribe to broadband service, 45 percent didn’t want it, 31 percent didn’t own a computer and 21 percent said it was too expensive.

Continue reading

Socket lands Callaway broadband project

  By
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act constru...

Image via Wikipedia

“Big city broadband. Rural reality.”

That’s how Socket Telecom is touting the fiber-optic network it’s set to build in central Callaway County and a sliver of eastern Boone County.

This month the US Department of Agriculture awarded Socket a $16.6 million grant and a $7.1 million loan under the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Within the next 90 days, Socket will use that money to start building a fiber-optic network capable of serving more than 3,000 homes and businesses.

Continue reading

Opelika Votes to Create Municipal Network

  By

BroadbandBreakfast.com Staff, BroadbandBreakfast.com

S. 8th Street in Opelika, Alabama
Image via Wikipedia

WASHINGTON August 11, 2010- The Alabama town of Opelika has decided to set up its own cable television and internet network.

The town voted in a referendum aimed at providing some competition to Charter Communications; the town’s only ISP.

Continue reading

Editorial: Hungry for fiber

  By

By Daily Record Staff

Hunger seems to be driving the new chapter in the grassroots push to build a high-speed fiber-optic network in Baltimore. And that’s a good thing.

The hunger, says Litecast LLC’s Mark Wagner, is for “something more,” in this case a potentially valuable economic development tool that might also spark social change.

This all started, of course, with Google, the California search engine giant that said in February it would pick a test market to build an ultra-fast broadband network connecting anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people to the Web.

Continue reading

Vermont Is Wiring Itself With Fiber Because Nobody Else Will

  By

East Ventral Vermont Community Fiber Network moving forward…

06:24PM Thursday Jul 29 2010 by Karl Bode

Vermont already wasn’t exactly a great state for broadband, given the largely rural state is a ROI nightmare for large ISP bean counters. Their broadband fortunes were recently made substantially worse by Fairpoint Communications, who acquired Verizon‘s unwanted New England DSL network, then subsequently imploded under the not so watchful eye of Vermont regulators. Vermont’s been tired of waiting for uninterested ISPs to wire them so they’re working hard at wiring themselves.

Continue reading