interview

Content tagged with "interview"

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Streets.mn Interview With Christopher

We received a visit in the Institute for Local Self-Reliance offices last week from Bill Lindeke from streets.mn. Bill came to interview our own Christopher Mitchell so he could learn more about our work at ILSR. The two talked about Chris' favorite topic. In Bills' words:

I sat down with him today in his office in Minneapolis’ Seward Neighborhood to talk about the monopoly-laden history of fiberoptic investments in the US, the frustrating failure of Minneapolis’s public/private wi-fi system, and what cities in Minnesota, small and large, can do to gain access to better broadband internet access. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can listen in to this lively conversation or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

While you have your headphones on, be sure to check out the Community Broadband Bits Podast. Christopher has interviewed network officials, community leaders, and policy advocates whose passion is spreading the benefits of broadband to as many people as possible.

The Five Fundamentals for Future Telecommunications - Community Broadband Bits Podcast #32

Harold Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge, is back on Community Broadband Bits to discuss five fundamental rules necessary to ensure we have a great telecommunications system that benefits everyone. Harold first appeared on our show in episode 23. Harold explains the Five Fundamentals here and includes a link to their full filing [pdf]. In short, the fundamentals are: Service to all Americans, Interconnection and Competition; Consumer Protection; Network Reliability; and Public Safety. The comments also include some thoughtful words about the balance between federal, state, and local governments in ensuring these five fundamentals. Read the transcript from our conversation here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 25 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Scarlett McGrady Explains Virginia's Wired Road

The Wired Road is an ambitious fiber optic and wireless project offering Internet access to several underserved areas in rural Virginia. For the 31st episode of our Community Broadband Bits Bits podcast, Scarlett McGrady joins me to discuss its history and impact on the region. McGrady is the Director of the Grant Community Computing Center [link to Facebook page], which providers a variety of services including computer literacy courses. The Wired Road has long had gigabit capacity for those who are within range of the fiber optic connections. Anyone who can take a service from the network has to choose a service provider as the network is a pure open access approach: the community-owned network does not offer any services directly to subscribers. Instead, the Wired Road builds the infrastructure to enable independent service providers to offer services. We discuss the Wired Road and the many ways that rural residents enjoy using the Internet to improve themselves and their businesses. You can find our previous stories about the Wired Road here. Read the transcript from this show here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 20 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download this Mp3 file directly here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Jason Bird Explains how Princeton Kept Jobs in Community with Publicly Owned Fiber Network

Jason Bird is the Electrical Superintendent at the city of Princeton Utilities in Illinois. He joins us for the 30th episode of our Community Broadband Bits Podcast to explain why Princeton built a rather unique network. Princeton has built a fiber network to connect some of the local businesses and uses broadband over power lines (BPL) to provide a low cost option for area residents. Princeton offers another example of how a community can build and own the infrastructure while partnering with a local company that will provision the services. This approach appeals to many towns that recognize the benefits of ensuring the network is owned by the community but do not want to provide services themselves. This network helped save hundreds of jobs and has benefited the community in many ways -- just one of which is that they were selected as a site that allowed families to videochat with our troops deployed abroad over the holidays. Read our coverage of Princeton's network here. Read the transcript from this episode here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 21 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Susan Crawford, Captive Audience, and How to Kill the Cable Monopoly

Susan Crawford, author of the just-released Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, is our guest for the 29th episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. A former adviser to President Obama, she has been a leading figure in the struggle to preserve an open Internet. Susan has long been an advocate of communities deciding for themselves if a community owned network is a wise investment and recognizes the benefits of smart government policies to prevent big companies like Comcast from dominating the telecommunications arena. We talk about her book and reactions to it -- big cable and telephone companies are attacking her under false pretenses by either putting words in her mouth or misrepresenting her main points. But we also discuss the steps concerned people can take to bring force some accountability on the big monopolies. We have previously noted Susan's words and presentations here and we noted some Captive Audience reviews here. Read the transcript from this episode here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 17 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Community Broadband Bits 28 - Bruce Kushnick

If you think the United States cannot afford to take a fiber optic cable to just about every home in the country, you might be surprised to find out that we have already paid for it. We just haven't received it. Our first podcast guest in 2013, Bruce Kushnick of the New Networks Institute, explains the $300 billion ripoff. Bruce and I discuss how the big telephone companies promised to build a fiber optic Internet in return for being allowed to increase their prices. This brings us to Kushnick's Law: "A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today." The telephone companies raised their prices, but decided to give the proceeds out to shareholders rather than invest in the promised networks. We got higher prices and DSL rather than the fiber optic networks we were promised. Our regulators largely failed us, in part because the only people who pay attention to Public Utility Commissions are the industries regulated by them and the occasional underfunded consumer advocate. This is a very good introduction to why we all pay far too much for services that are too slow and insufficiently reliable. Read the transcript from this episode here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 26 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Community Broadband Bits 26 - Josh Wallace, Palo Alto

This week, Josh Wallace from the City of Palo Alto Utilities joins us to talk about the City's dark fiber network for episode 26 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. Josh describes how the dark fiber network connects businesses, offering incredibly high capacity connections at affordable flat rate pricing. The utility charges an upfront fee to make a dark fiber connection, which means that nearly all the ongoing revenues are net income. It is a very good business to be in, both for the utility and local businesses that would have to pay much more for their connections if the City did not offer the dark fiber option. Despite its success in dark fiber, Palo Alto is not poised to offer any lit services -- which would dramatically increase the potential number of customers. The main reason appears to be the difficulty of competing with the nation's largest cable company, Comcast. Its massive footprint allows Comcast to engage in predatory pricing and other anti-competitive tactics to ensure competitors have a miserable life. Though some cities, Chattanooga especially, have done very well competing against Comcast (one of the nation's most hated corporations year after year), other communities are simply unwilling to engage in what can be a brutal fight. Read the transcript from this episode here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 19 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Community Broadband Bits 25 - Dewayne Hendricks Returns

Dewayne Hendricks has returned for his second appearance on the Community Broadband Bits Podcast, continuing our discussion about the potential for wireless technologies to improve how we access the Internet. We recommend listening to his first appearance in episode 18 before this one. Here, we take up the old wired vs. wireless debate, but quickly determine that such a framing is useless. Wires and radios are actually complementary, not substitutes. In fact, Dewayne explains how he and other entrepreneurs cannot build the great wireless networks they want to because most communities lack the robust wired infrastructure necessary to support a strong wireless network. The lack of competition among last mile providers like Comcast and AT&T leave too few options for innovators to build better networks -- which is, of course, the aim of existing providers that do not want to encourage any competition that would eat into their profits. Read the transcript from this discussion here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 25 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Community Broadband Bits 24 - Dr Browder of Bristol, Tennessee

Dr Browder runs Bristol Tennessee Essential Services, the municipal utility on the southern side of Bristol's Virginia border. For our 24th Community Broadband Bits podcast, he tells us how they built a FTTH network and how it has helped the community. Like so many others, they started by seeking to ensure maximum reliability of the electrical grid. Now they offer telephone, television, and Internet access to the whole community. In fact, they just announced that they can offer a gigabit to anyone in the area, making them the fifth such city in America to have that level of service available. All of them are community networks. One of the things Dr. Browder explains is how connecting all their schools with 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps connections has led to stronger schools and new opportunities for kids to learn. Read the transcript from this episode here. We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address. This show is 20 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment! Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.