“While we can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to bring Fiber to Chicago and L.A., this is a big step for these cities and their leaders,” Jill Szuchmacher, director of Google Fiber’s expansion efforts, wrote in a blog. “ Expansion planning for a project of this size is a huge undertaking.”  Continue reading

(TNS) — A Boulder City Council operating at less than half-strength pondered Thursday night how the city can best make use of its existing fiber infrastructure to deliver improved Internet service, without assuming too great a financial risk. 

There is no debating that fiber is the future of high-speed Internet, and Boulder is sitting on about 100 miles of it.  But to get from where it is today to a fiber-to-the-home service that covers the city, Boulder is either going to have to do that itself, a la Longmont, or partner with a private company that would set up the last-mile fiber the city needs, or both.  Continue reading

Lake Oswego is taking the right tact here by considering a public-private partnership, but the should structure it in such a way where other service providers, even Google, can access the network to sell competitive services.  By doing this they reduce the risk by spreading the infrastructure costs over more service providers.  After a while even the incumbent providers will take advantage of the infrastructure.  The private partner would build, operate, and maintain the fiber network so they would be adequately compensated for their efforts. 

LAKE OSWEGO, Oregon, October 14, 2015 – This suburb of Portland, a potential candidate for Google Fiber’s Gigabit-speed internet service, has said it isn’t willing to wait around for the search engine giant.  Continue reading

Today the Chattanooga Electric Power Board, the city-owned power utility, says that it is now offering 10 gigabit connections—nearly 1,000 faster than the average broadband connection in the US—to every business and residence in the city for about $300 a month.  It will also offer three and five gigabit speed connections in addition its existing one gigabit service.  Continue reading

This is a great infographic showing the state of broadband services in the United States, but the text in the article is a little misleading.  First of all the reason that about half the rural residents can’t get broadband service is because the FCC changed the definition of broadband service and the incumbent carriers are trying to catch up to meet the new definition.  Second allowing municipalities to decide their own broadband fate will not address the problem of reaching customers outside the city limits. 

The uninformed and big government types look at municipal broadband as the panacea to all our broadband ills, but there is a reason that 19 states have enacted laws preventing municipal governments from getting into this business.  They recognize that about half of these ventures fail and leave taxpayers on the hook to cover the losses, and that bureaucracies are generally not market oriented.  Continue reading

I personally support all initiatives that will allow the city to investigate options for increasing broadband penetration and competition in their communities.  I do not support cities entering the broadband services business.  Government should facilitate and promote private business activities in their cities; not compete against them.  I hope that Fort Collins takes this point-of-view when deciding what to do. 

Robin Gard

Downtown “Old Town” Fort Collins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am writing to urge a yes-vote on the November ballot issue dealing with broadband options for the City of Fort Collins.  This vote would exempt Fort Collins from a 2005 state law that prohibits governments from competing with the public sector and would allow our City Council to begin exploring options about providing fiber optic broadband to the community. 

Voters in almost a dozen Colorado towns and cities have acted on this issue.  Local voter approval would clear the way for study and investigation toward providing increased service to local population, whether independently or as part of a public-private partnership.  The city could begin collecting benchmark data to examine its options in future provision of services.  Continue reading

Everywhere the country has been able to get an electric line, it ought to be able to get a fiber cable, said Jonathan Chambers, chief of the office, widely regarded as the FCC think tank for technological advancement.  Continue reading