DePriest tells me that EPB's fiber network is "a great profit center." In the four years the service has been active, the utility company has increased its mid-tier speeds three times — from 15 Mbps to 30 Mbps, from 30 Mbps to 50 Mbps and now from 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps. About 2,500 elite users will enjoy 1-gig speeds by the beginning of October.

AT&T charges $65 a month for 24/3Mbps service — its fastest — with a 250GB monthly usage cap, currently not enforced. For $5 more, EPB customers get 1,000/1,000Mbps with no usage limits or overlimit fees.

Mr. DePriest said Comcast had some 122,000 customers on the EPB grid when EPB launched its rival program. He said Comcast is down to around 75,000 and will likely drop to around 60,000 next year.

Our listening audience hears Chris Mitchell interview people every week for the Broadband Bits Podcast. Now it is time for the interviewer to become the interviewee.

Chris took a few minutes to participate in the June 2013 episode of the Whatcha Workin' On Podcast from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. He told us a little about how the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative got started and what we are working on now. This is a nice opportunity to spend ten minutes looking at the inner workings of ILSR's broadband efforts.

You can listen to Chris and subscribe to the the podcast via iTunes. Each month we talk with a different member of the team to find out what is going on at ILSR.

Klint Finley from Wired.com joined a Media Consortium press call that our own Christopher Mitchell participated in regarding community owned networks, Google Fiber, and concerns about the future of Internet access. He wrote about the event and the promise of municipal networks.

Finley referred readers to us:

But there’s no guarantee that Google Fiber will come to the rest of the United States, and many communities may want to start building an alternative right away. Mitchell said the first step towards building a municipal broadband service in your area is to get educated about what other communities have done. That’s the purpose of the site muninetworks.org, which compiles information about municipal broadband initiatives across the country. The goal is to create a comprehensive resource for community organizers. Users can explore the projects in different states through the Community Network map.

We continue to find more local governments moving forward with their own investments to improve local access, suggesting that many understand the folly of hoping some distant corporation will build the network they need to be successful in the digital economy.

My presentation from Freedom to Connect on why we should support Community Owned Internet networks. Unfortunately, the video starts about 1 minute into the presentation. Please leave feedback below.

Last week, Catharine Rice and I were guests on a Democracy Now! segment filmed at the Freedom to Connect conference. We discussed what community broadband is, how it has benefited communities, and how a few big cable and telephone companies are trying to stop it.

CONSIDER your last electrical appliance purchase. Did you pause to think if your home could handle the increased electrical demand? No, because our electrical networks are built around the principle of abundance, not scarcity. If the massive cable companies ran our electrical grid like they do their broadband networks, we would have to do without air conditioning, which puts a heavy strain on the grid during peak demand. In contrast, the cable networks get congested during periods of peak activity, failing to deliver the “up to” speed promised in their advertising. Some new network builders are embracing a different approach, one that has major implications for the future of innovation: adopting a business model of abundance rather than scarcity.

The Tar Heel economy is continuing its transition from tobacco and textiles to high technology. Internet startups populate the Research Triangle, and Charlotte’s financial services economy depends on high-quality data connections. Truly, next-generation Internet connections are crucial to the state. It is deeply disturbing that the Federal Communications Commission ranks North Carolina at the bottom nationally – tied with Mississippi – in the percentage of households subscribing to a “basic broadband” connection. The residents and businesses of nearly every other state have superior connections.

I am going to be on Gigabit Nation today with Craig Settles, a live call-in show, from 2-3 Eastern time. You can listen online here both during the show and after, when the recording will be made available.

Craig put together this summary:

On October 24th, tune to the Media Action Grassroots Network for a discussion on community networks and their contribution to the areas that create them. MAG-Net will be hosting a Digital Dialogue at 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST. The presentation is titled Community Broadband as a Path to Thriving Local Economies and Neighborhood Development.

From the announcement:

In the last several years local communities, governments, non-profit organizations and neighborhood residents from across the U.S. have successfully launched community broadband initiatives.  54 U.S. cities own citywide fiber networks and another 79 own citywide cable networks.  These local initiatives, in rural and urban areas alike, have served as community scale infrastructures that have helped revitalize local economies. They are sustainable and allow participation and decision-making on the most local level.

For community media advocates it's not just about having access to broadband services, it's also about owning the infrastructure and gaining access, rights and power to media that provide marginalized community members with needed broadband access. Recently, city and state legislation have surfaced that would prevent community owned broadband networks, panelists will touch on the motives behind these bills and ways to fight them. This digital dialogue will feature advocates, experts and organizers who have been working on building community broadband networks, they will reflect on lessons learned, best practices, case studies and challenges.

The list of speakers includes:

• our own Christopher Mitchell
• Fabiola Carrion from Progressive States Network
• Danielle Chynoweth from the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center

To sign up for the hour-long event, register here.

If you would like more info, contact Betty Yu: betty@centerformediajustice.org