How does it work that we will do more with less? The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA, Dept. of Commerce) published a report noting that the Majority of Americans Use Multiple Internet-connected Devices, Data Shows. From their blog post (with several nice graphs), In just a two-year span, between 2011 and 2013, Americans significantly…
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Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter and the San Leandro City Council announced that the City’s Information Technology Division has been honored with a national award from the Center for Digital Government. This annual survey recognizes leading examples of U.S. cities that use technology to improve services and boost efficiencies. San Leandro was selected because of its…
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Another fascinating podcast from Community Broadband Networks: Ammon, Idaho, continues to quietly build a future-looking open access fiber network. Though the City won’t be providing services directly to subscribers, the network it is building and the model it has created could revolutionize public safety. There are two podcasts and more in the Ammon story. The…
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Residential customers ask if or when we’ll reach into the neighborhoods. It’s a long way off, given the small size of our organization. Meanwhile, technology continues its pace forward with more reasons to have faster access and questions about how today’s business models will evolve in the future. First, What’s up with 4K Video? helps…
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Industry analyst and colleague Craig Settles offers his personal perspective on why community broadband is important. When someone suffers a stroke [as Craig did in late January], they have three hours to get serious treatment or they often will not recover from its debilitating effects. I was lucky, but a person living alone in a…
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Community Broadband Networks‘ Podcast 172 is on Open Access Engineering Options, a slightly technical but interesting discussion on being a service provider. http://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/audio/comm-bb-bits-podcast172-tim-pozar-open-access.mp3 From the program description: The holy grail of Internet access for many of us continues to be a situation in which multiple providers can compete on a level playing field, which should…
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The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy published a great “compendium of resources and approaches” to developing a state-level broadband policy. It starts with the basics: Why Broadband Policy Matters, then goes comprehensively through Elements of a Good Broadband Policy, ending with Conclusions.
In early August at the Black Hat conference, Jennifer Granick, the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, offered a brilliant, starkly reality-checking keynote speech. The Benton Foundation offered a wonderful summary of Granick’s talk, noting that it’s one of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week.…
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The FCC needs to hear from you about their proposal to ban Wi-Fi router firmware modifications (ET Docket No. 15-170). This proposal is problematic from several angles—it negatively impacts security and bug fixing, privacy, innovation, and more. Specifically, this proposal would ban modifications to the radio systems in routers and many phones, tablets, laptops, and…
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For our neighboring and distant communities seeking a fiber network, Community Broadband Networks has a great article, Want a Gig? Ask Consultants the Right Questions, on asking the right questions first. This is not a binary question of “should we” (usually meaning: do it all at once) but rather more like finding a custom fit…
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