Tag: Kansas

AT&T joins case; Chanute needs state nod to offer fiber broadband, says 1947 law

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BY DION LEFLER
Chanute, Kansas

Chanute, Kansas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After beating back a legislative effort to stop them, city leaders in Chanute now face another state government hurdle in their effort to extend ultra-high-speed fiber broadband to residents’ homes and businesses.

Because of a 1947 state law on utilities, the city has to get permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to sell bonds to fund its fiber-to-home project, which would extend some of the fastest Internet service in the nation to the rural community of about 9,200 people in southeast Kansas. Continue reading

Kansas City, Kan., to be Google’s broadband test bed

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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

There’s some rough news for Topeka, Kan., the city that courted Google’s ultra-high-speed municipal broadband project by changing its name to Google. The Mountain View, Calif., tech giant announced Wednesday that the lucky city that gets to be its broadband guinea pig not only isn’t Topeka, but it’s Kansas City, Kansas–just an hour’s drive away. Ouch.

More than 1,100 communities had applied since the call for applicants was announced about a year ago. Kansas City will first see the new developments next year, and Google is already looking for additional communities to join the test.

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Stimulus winner Rural Telephone targets 100 Mb/s to the home

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While some rural telcos protest proposed modifications to the Universal Service fund that would support only 4 Mb/s service to the home, one rural telco is moving ahead with plans to deploy a fiber to the home network supporting speeds up to 100 Mb/s service to sparsely populated areas of western Kansas. The deployment is made possible by $101 million in funding through the Broadband Stimulus Program, which was awarded on a 50/50 grant/loan basis to Rural Telephone, a rural ILEC that also has CLEC operations.

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