Tag: FTTH

Tennessee’s Municipal Electric Systems Asking Legislature To Remove Broadband Restrictions

  By

The Tennessee Municipal Electric Power Association (TMEPA) is seeking to end Tennessee’s constraint on municipal electric broadband “so that communities can choose their internet providers and to give more Tennesseans access to the fastest broadband speeds in the country.”

TMEPA consists of the state’s 60 municipal systems which serve 2.1 million homes and businesses, or 70 percent of Tennessee’s electric customers.   TMEPA is supporting legislation (SB1134 / HB1303) that removes the current limitation on municipal electric broadband providers that restricts broadband service to just its electric service territory.  This change in the law would allow municipal electric broadband to expand to more areas where it is needed if those communities want it, the group said.  Continue reading

Gigabit plan officially launched; 25 Optico fiberhoods open

  By
Flag of Puerto Rico

Flag of Puerto Rico (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, has announced the official launch of the ‘Gigabit Island’ plan, with the goal that in five years 99% of households will have access to download speeds of at least 10Mbps, while 1Gbps services should be accessible in 70% of homes within the same timeframe. As reported by Telesemana, the Gigabit programme is guided by the public-private Puerto Rico Broadband Taskforce (PRBT) under a remit to continue the work accomplished by Puerto Rico’s Strategic Plan for Broadband (2012), and the current strategy recommends a number of actions to promote the development of broadband, including: continuing geographical broadband expansion; beginning work on monitoring, measurement and evaluation of the impact of broadband on the economy; lowering costs of building broadband systems; ensuring access to poles, ducts and other public and private sites for the deployment of infrastructure; and promoting public-private partnerships to stimulate local demand. According to the executive summary of the Gigabit Island plan, by June 2014 around 77.8% of households were covered by broadband access networks with speeds of at least 10Mbps (download)/1.5Mbps (upstream), while an estimated 52.9% of households had the possibility of connecting at 100Mbps (download). Additionally, the report notes that 99.9% of households in the country had mobile broadband coverage with speeds of ‘up to 3Mbps downstream and 768kbps upload’. Continue reading

Move over, Google Fiber. Hello, Brooklyn Fiber

  By
English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhat...

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan, New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BY

Download an entire movie in about a minute and a half. Send a whole genome in a fraction of the time.

That’s the promise of low-cost gigabit Internet service that is finally coming to New York.

Brooklyn Fiber, a three-year-old five-person startup, is rolling out its gigabit broadband service this week in Industry City, the Brooklyn complex of former warehouse buildings under development in Sunset Park. That’s 20 times faster than existing download speeds in New York City, which average around 52 mbps, according to Ookla’s Speedtest.net service. Upload speeds average about 17 mbps. Continue reading

Opinion: Google Fiber deal not in best interest of NC public

  By

Occasionally I will post opposing opinions and different views about broadband services. This article below posits that broadband Internet provides no value to the community and individuals yet goes on to claim that such an asset should be owned by the government. 

The economic benefits to a broadband network are well documented and readily available if the writer chose to search and read them. I can definitely provide personal experiences how broadband Internet has enriched my life and made me more productive. Also, I take aim at why the government should own this network. With his logic, the government should own the other broadband networks as well. I quickly discounted the validity of his claim with his poor analogies and oxymoronic reasoning. I applaud Google for coming to town and introducing true competition in the markets that they enter.

BY DAWSON GAGE

The announcement of a deal with Google to bring ultra-fast Internet to the Triangle is being hailed like rain in the desert. Amid an economy that, flashes of optimism aside, remains in stagnation, we imagine that the super-fast Internet will super-charge our businesses, our schools, our very lives.

High-speed Internet doesn’t really improve the speed or, more importantly, the quality of how most of us do business –most of us don’t work for Netflix or engage in high-speed financial speculation. It also doesn’t make children learn faster or better – I somehow doubt that more HD streaming video will solve our education problems. Continue reading

CenturyLink Unveils Denver’s ‘Gig City’ Neighborhoods

  By
Denver, Colorado, Downtown

Denver, Colorado, Downtown (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CenturyLink has for the first time revealed the Denver neighborhoods where it’s offering 1 gigabit Internet service, aiming to show it’s keeping its promise to bring the city ultra-fast residential Internet.

The Monroe, Louisiana-based telecom (Nasdaq: CTL) said 1 gigabit-per-second is being offered in 16 neighborhoods in the city’s core, making it available to a substantial number of homes in each area and expanding the reach of the service every day. Continue reading

Minnesota Hooks Up 10 GB Fiber Network

  By

minnesota-hooks-up-10-gb-fiber-network[1]

By: MARTIN BLANC

While AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is worrying about net neutrality rules and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is delaying fiber expansion, the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is enjoying speeds of 10 Gbps (1 Gbps = 1024 Mbps). US households on average, on the other hand, only have access to speeds of 20.7 Mbps.

Provided by US Internet, the fiber to premises broadband service costs around $399 per month. While it would definitely put a dent in the subscriber’s pocket, it is great for small and medium scale businesses that depend on fast Internet access. Continue reading

The road to municipal Internet: Boulder benefits from Longmont’s journey

  By
English: Looking north from the intersection o...

English: Looking north from the intersection of Main St. and 3rd Ave. towards the 300 block of Main St. Longmont, Colorado. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Governments do not tend to learn from their mistakes, they just cover them up with more money. Even detailed articles like these fail to ask the question whether government should be doing this or are there better ways of delivering broadband services.

By Karen Antonacci

Paul Radliff, of Longmont, had his home connected via fiber-optic cable to the city’s new high-speed Internet service earlier this month.

Under his old DSL service, he could download information at a speed of 20 megabits per second. Continue reading