Municipal Networks

New financial disclosures for a November ballot initiative show that a group backed by private internet providers spent just over $900,000 to try and block city-owned broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado.

A May court order requiring continued operation of the state's $90 million "middle-mile" broadband network remains in effect, despite an effort to quash it.  That development comes as the arcane legal dispute mushrooms, nine months after the network operator's surprise bankruptcy filing.

Right now, cities and towns have a little bit of leverage when talking to cable companies about installing fiber networks, according to Harvard law professor Susan Crawford. "Through saying, 'Look, come and build this network for us. But you can only build it by providing equal service to everybody in town and at a low price,' that's how that particular direction is being carried out in Massachusetts,” Crawford said. But she said towns may not be able to do that anymore. “The great uncertainty created by the recent FCC order is that Mr.

It's going to cost somewhere between $70 and $140 million, officials estimate, to build out the underground fiber-to-the-premises network that Boulder (CO) needs to make community-wide broadband a reality. The question for the City Council has never been whether this pursuit is worthwhile, as voters and elected leaders clearly agree on the value of open-access, affordable, high-speed internet — the introduction of which would put pressure on the incumbent Comcast-CenturyLink duopoly to lower their prices and offer higher speeds.

[Commentary] Some of you might recall that in Nov, Verizon announced it would make Sacramento the first city in the country to have 5G – or fifth-generation – residential wireless broadband service. We beat out at least two other cities for it, following a few months of being a test market. Now if all goes well, many more Sacramentans will be able to tap into the ultra-high-speed service with their smartphones, tablets and computers by the second half of 2018. The deal, in part, is the culmination of another one inked in June.

Network neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks. In short, we must end our reliance on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure.

[Commentary]  Recently, 19 towns across Colorado voted to allow the exploration of creating a local, public alternative to expensive private providers. Fort Collins (CO) voters went the furthest, passing a measure to finance an assessment of starting a city-owned broadband utility, which would aim to provide faster service at a cheaper price. That means residents could have a say in whether a new public network maintains the principle of network neutrality, whatever the Federal Communications Commission decides in the future.

[Commentary] The high rate of rural hospital closures is one factor driving the increasing interest in telemedicine, which uses high speed internet services to connect patients with healthcare providers. What some may not understand is that the push for telehealth may very well be the secret to advancing broadband itself in underserved communities, both rural and urban. By aligning healthcare institutions with schools and libraries that have telemedicine applications and services into a healthcare hub, a community can produce a powerful infrastructure.

[Commentary] The city of New York has released a new Request for Information seeking technical and operational input from industry sources. The city wants to know what types of strategies for public/private cooperation it should consider in an effort to deliver "universal gigabit-class broadband" throughout the five boroughs.

After Nov 7’s elections, a total of 31Colorado counties have voted to be exempted from a state law against municipal broadband networks.