News
“Our current incumbent providers are not going to help”
October 3rd, 2012
The website for Wired magazine has an opinion piece on making ultra-high-speed connectivity a reality in the U.S. The piece is written by Susan Crawford, visiting Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, whom we quoted in this blog post. We find ourselves […]
Read More >Fiber-to-the-Home White Paper
September 25th, 2012
The 2012 Fiber-to-the-Home Conference is underway now in Dallas, and Todd Marriott, UTOPIA Executive Director, is presenting tomorrow morning. His topic is “Next Generation Application Deployment: Cracking the Municipal Fiber Nut.” Todd prepped a white paper on the subject, which is available here. It’s a good-size paper, but if you have interest in the technical side […]
Read More >Steve Wozniak and the Lure of Fiber
September 21st, 2012
Few people have more “geek cred” than Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. After all, he’s known to many simply as “Woz.” And, it seems Woz loves the concept of bringing fiber optics to everyone. While in Australia last week for the launch of the iPhone 5, Woz had plenty of nice things to say about the […]
Read More >Apple’s Innovation Paradigm and Broadband Connectivity
September 12th, 2012
With the launch today of the iPhone 5, as well as redesigned iPods, Apple has once again proven that technology is never static. Innovation is the name of the game, and companies who get behind the curve (yes, we mean you, Nokia, RIM) do so at their peril. While in the grand scheme of things […]
Read More >The Broadband Landscape
September 6th, 2012
What is the role, importance, and future of broadband? Broadband for America has been hosting several panel discussions on the subject, and some interesting tidbits have emerged from one of these panels: Broadband network companies support over 10 million jobs and growing. Broadband-related jobs across the U.S. pay more than 41 percent above the […]
Read More >The Experiences of Other Fiber Networks
August 29th, 2012
In April, Christopher Mitchell (who recently wrote a blog post for us), published “Broadband at the Speed of Light.” In this report, he explains “how three communities built next-generation networks,” focusing on Chattanooga, Tn.; Bristol, Va.; and Lafayette, La. We’ve been meaning to dig into that report and share some elements. By no means […]
Read More >Guest Post–Community Broadband: America’s Broadband Hope
August 14th, 2012
Guest Column: Christopher Mitchell The broadband gap in America is slowly morphing into a broadband chasm. Millions of Americans have no broadband access to the Internet. Tens of millions are stuck with only slow and unreliable DSL. The vast majority of America has a single cable option as its fastest connection to the Internet. […]
Read More >Catching the Vision of Open-Access Broadband
July 19th, 2012
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” The quote above, attributed to Thomas Watson in 1943, when he was chairman and CEO of IBM, is an illustrative example of shortsightedness and bad predictions. While useful in that regard, there’s one minor problem: there is no evidence Watson actually said it. […]
Read More >Benefits of Community Broadband
July 19th, 2012
At the end of June, Christopher Mitchell of Community Broadband Networks interviewed Todd Marriott, UTOPIA Executive Director, for a podcast, which is now available. Mitchell is Director, Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR), and oversees MuniNetworks.org as part of ILSR’s effort “to ensure broadband networks are directly accountable to […]
Read More >Broadband as Infrastructure
June 26th, 2012
Om Malik (founder of GigaOM) recently wrote an article regarding the US-Ignite announcement. He’s not convinced US-Ignite will do what it’s setting out to do, but his perspective regarding broadband is discerning: Broadband is of crucial importance to our global economy. Just as railroads and roads were crucial to the Industrial Revolution, broadband connectedness is […]
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