Loveland City Council gives final OK for city to pursue municipal broadband

Stock photoCity Council Chambers in the Loveland Municipal Building on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017.(Photo by Jenny Sparks/Loveland Repdorter-Herald)

By Julia Rentsch

Loveland will amend its Electric Enterprise utility to include communications services in due course, and begin development of a detailed municipal broadband business plan after several ordinances passed by the City Council Tuesday night.

The three ordinances adopted on second reading allow city staff to direct time and resources toward fulfilling the seven recommendations delivered to council by the Loveland Broadband Task Force Dec. 12. The first ordinance, to appropriate $2.5 million from the Power General Fund for staff to follow the recommendations, passed 8-1 with Councilor Dave Clark against; the second, to add communications to the Loveland electric utility, passed 5-4 with councilors Clark, Don Overcash, Jeremy Jersvig and Steve Olson against; the third, to transition the Task Force into a new city advisory board for communications, passed 7-2, with Clark and Olson against. Continue reading

From unserved to connected: Leverett’s fiber-optic system a model for rural towns

By Larry Parnass, [email protected]

LEVERETT — Inside a green metal building in Leverett, lightning-fast internet connections pulse through yellow-coated fibers, one per customer.

One strand belongs to Susan Valentine, an artist who lives down the hill on Long Plain Road in this Franklin County town.

“Man, it was a long time coming,” she said recently. Continue reading

The Debate Over Muni Broadband Expansion

By Stephanie Kanowitz

As communities across the country continue to clamor for high-speed broadband, the number of critics speaking out against municipal broadband is growing.

At the heart of the debate is whether governments or private industry should have jurisdiction over broadband. Those who favor private industry point to the historical success of capitalism, while “broadband populists,” as a new report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) calls them, favor government regulation and operation much like other city services. Continue reading

Google Fiber Halts Rollout; Top Exec Leaves

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Fiber is halting its rollout in 10 cities and laying off staff as its chief executive, Craig Barratt, steps down, dealing a major setback to the Internet giant’s ambitions of blanketing the nation in super-speedy Internet.

Barratt, CEO of Alphabet’s Access division who had been in charge of Google Fiber, said in a blog post that he would stay on as an adviser. Continue reading

Centennial’s gigabit internet service now taking pre-orders

By

Three years after Centennial voters approved a measure clearing the city to explore building its own broadband network, a Canadian company is asking, will you pre-order gigabit internet for $89 a month?

If enough people bite, Ting Internet will bring its fiber-optic network to residents of the city as early as next year. Continue reading

Calix announces five municipal broadband fiber-optic network deployments

Rangely Museum

Rangely Museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lightwave Staff

Calix Inc. will provide its fiber to the premises (FTTP) network gear to five municipal markets.

Independence Light and Power, Telecommunications (ILP, T) in Independence, IA, plans to upgrade its hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) plant to an all-fiber network to deliver managed WiFi services to subscribers and expand the company’s reach outside of the city limits. The service provider will deploy Calix 725GE optical network terminals (ONTs) and E7-2 modular access systems.

“Every week, we are adding more and more broadband subscribers who are looking for a robust and reliable broadband service,” says Josh Vandenburg, network engineer at ILP, T. “By moving to the Calix solutions, we are now able to seamlessly transition to fiber, which allows us to roll out new services and fully utilize the 10 Gbits/sec ring that runs through Independence.” Continue reading

Town Loses Gigabit Connections After FCC Municipal Broadband Court Loss

English: Availability of 4 Mbps-Capable Broadb...

English: Availability of 4 Mbps-Capable Broadband Networks in the United States by County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carl’s opinion piece is clearly in support of an industry that is very happy to sell equipment to these new customers because the incumbent telco business is not growing very fast, if at all. Allowing government to offer communications services in a particular market is not competing; it is taking it over because they can use bonds (low interest) and taxpayer money to fund these networks. State legislators have created these laws to prevent just these things from happening along with providing protection when half of these ventures go bankrupt.

Telcos are not clean on this because they are using crony capitalism to protect their monopoly or duopoly. If legislators enact such laws they should hold incumbents to the universal service agreement that AT&T adhered for decades.

Continue reading