municipal networks & community broadband

In two articles, Jesse Harris offers some insight as to how one can evaluate UTOPIA as a success or failure. In the first article, "Defining UTOPIA's Success," he looks at some of the indirect benefits from the network.

Financial success is the most obvious kind. It’s very easy to look at expenditures and revenues and come up with a bottom line figure. I don’t mean to discount the importance of coming up with a positive number at the end of that statement, but it really isn’t the entire financial picture. (Take a look at my breakdown of Provo’s real and potential savings from iProvo for a good example.) Orem, for example, is saving somewhere in the neighborhood of $600K per year in telecommunications costs by using UTOPIA fiber in their city. None of the other cities have released similar figures (at least not that I am aware of), but I think it safe to say that they are experiencing similar savings. Such an approach also fails to recognize that incumbent providers are forced to offer better service and pricing to attract and retain customers. Based on national figures, a UTOPIA-served neighborhood is likely to save 25% or more off of telecommunications costs.

In the second and longer article, "FUD Alert: Utah Taxpayers Association Continues to Bend and Cherry-Pick the Truth," he directly answers one of the fiercest critics of UTOPIA - the UTA.

His response is well worth a read as a model example of how to respond to these ignorant attacks. We cannot allow lies against community broadband to go unchecked - thank you Jesse for your strong response.

This article summarizes the "Public Ownership is Good Business" Panel from the 2008 Broadband Properties Summit. Panelists included Christopher Mitchell from muninetworks.org, Andrew Cohill of Design Nine, Monticello City Administrator Jeff O'Neill, Mary Farley of Steeplechase Networks, and John St. Julien from Lafayette.

This article wraps up the 2009 efforts of private companies to pass what some have termed the Incumbent Protection Act - an effort by private companies to use the State Legislature to prevent communities from building the fast broadband networks in which the private companies themselves refuse to invest.

In this short article, Joanne and Ken discuss why Colorado Municipalities need to think about broadband within their community and why Colorado law makes it more difficult for communities in Colorado to ensure they have modern broadband networks.