north carolina

• Salisbury, a community in North Carolina building a city-owned full fiber-to-the-home network, has run into an unexpected difficulty: naming the new network.
  

  To put it simply, all the good names are taken.

  Mike Crowell, director of broadband services — he jokes that he is the director of BS — says the city can't find a name that it can both trademark and get a domain name for.

  The story has some entertaining suggestions - but the reason I wanted to note the article is because it ends with this:

  In coming weeks, the city will be purchasing and outfitting a marketing trailer, which it can send into neighborhoods and to community events to explain the new cable utility and get people excited about what's around the bend. The trailer will be plastered, of course, with the system's chosen name.

  This is a great marketing method - particularly if the trailer has computers showing what is possible with the new network in direct comparison to existing offers. Wilson's Greenlight Network also used this approach and reported that it was very successful.

• South Carolina was unique in being the only state where the public controlled the spectrum available for WiMax and could have built a state-wide broadband network. Instead, they chose to sell it off to the private sector for a pittance.
• Despite state-created barriers to publicly owned broadband networks in South Carolina, the town of Hartsville is studying the feasibility of a city-owned network. The new Mayor is supporting this initiative:
  

  Pennington spoke about a proposed broadband initiative he is pushing that would enable the city to create a fiber optic network and offer broadband services such as high speed internet, cable television and digital telephone service to city residents and businesses.

  Hartsville City Council has approved funding up to $5,000 to pay for a feasibility study into the prospect of such an initiative. Officials are considering proposals for a study that could cost as much as $50,000 and hope to obtain the remaining funding from private sources.

Craig Settles recently wrote "Debunking Myths about Government-Run Broadband" to defend publicly owned networks (the title is unfortunate as many networks are publicly owned but not necessarily run directly by the government). Nonetheless, he tackles several false claims commonly levied against public networks and offers an entertaining rebuff to those rascally incumbents down in North Carolina that keep trying to buy legislation to protect themselves from competition:

Time Warner tried to get a bill passed in the state legislature this year to prevent cities from offering broadband service. They claimed community networks create an un-fair playing field. Personally, if I ran a bezillion dollar company and a small town of 48,000 with no prior technology business expertise built a network 10 times faster than my best offering, I’d be embarrassed to be associated with the bill. If incumbents want to level the playing field, maybe they should outsource their engineering operations to Wilson.

He revealed an upcoming list of ten smart broadband communities that has since been published here. This is a mixture of communities that have taken action to improve broadband - a variety of models and community types.

Without detracting from this list, I want to note that some networks are missing important context. For instance, Wilson NC, lists an unimpressive number of subscribers currently, but the network is still being built and many who want to subscribe are not yet able to subscribe. Additionally, it would be nice to see the prices offered for each speed tier -- many of these networks keep higher speed tiers much more affordable than do traditional carriers. That said, many kudos to Craig for putting this list out there (he will be putting similar lists up in the near future).

While on the subject of impressive community networks, NATOA has announced its community broadband awards. I am excited to see the city of Monticello recognized for its courage in responding to shady incumbent-led attacks and frivolous lawsuits -- primarily by TDS -- attempting to deny the community the right to build its own network.

Though the other award recipients are also excellent, I want to congratulation MI-Connection for their award of Community Broadband Project of the Year. Years ago, I wrote an op-ed in favor of that network and I am glad to see it succeeding.

MI-Connection was born after the demise of Adelphia Cable. Local towns bought the system and rehabilitated it, offering a publicly owned local alternative for broadband and cable.

Image Credit: Domen Colja - Fotolia.com

• Lafayette's groundbreaking network is exciting the folks at Governing.com - they say, "The Future of the Internet is in Lafayette, Louisiana." Ellen Perlman hints are future coverage of the network as well:

  To put it in perspective, that's 10 times faster than already very fast Internet. And more than 100 times faster than the Internet "starter" plan that, for example, Verizon is offering. Basically, Lafayette will have a city Intranet, the way universities and technology companies do. So residents will have a very fast connection within the city-parish "campus." Critics wonder why residents need such speeds and why the city had to build its own network. An August story in Governing will get into detail about that.

• Green Party Candidate for the Syracuse City Council speaks out on the need for a publicly owned fiber network in the city:

  Hundreds of US cities have municipal ownership of their broadband utilities and their customers pay 30% less on average for cable TV, internet, and phone. Time Warner’s cable franchise is up for renewal. Now is the time to municipalize our broadband utility for (1) lower fees, (2) community control of available channels (from Democracy Now to the NFL Network), (3) quality Public Access, Education, and Government (PEG) programming, (4) universal access to high-speed internet, and (5) up-to-date public access video and web-based media creation centers. Every Syracuse should have first-class, affordable access to internet, cable, and phone communications. The Syracuse economy needs first-rate affordable broadband to progress. The profits now exported to Time-Warner can stay in the community for our own benefit through municipal cable.

  Advocates for such a fiber network in Syracuse have a website loaded with resources.

• Will wireline-based telephone companies need a bailout in coming years? This is an interesting analysis that suggests the public may end up financing these networks one way or another... The argument goes like this - as people increasingly get rid of that landline, these companies still have massive expenses they may not be able to cover.

  The Wireline TelCos are among the largest employers in the country; Verizon and AT&T alone have more than half a million employees between them, and most of those are in their Wireline divisions. Collectively, the Bells support more pensioners than even General Motors. At $60B, their unfunded postretirement obligations amountto $200 for every man, woman, and child in America. They are among the nation’s largest providers of health care coverage.

• Muniwireless.com put up a post detailing stimulus-related expansion plans for the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) in North Carolina.