We are excited to continue our history series with Jim Baller of the Baller Herbst Law Firm. This is Jim's third time on the program, having joined us for Episode 57 and Episode 63. We continue our discussion with a recap of the events of 2004, including Jim's work with Lafayette to find a compromise to the ALEC bill that would have effectively banned municipal networks in Louisiana and the Verizon-led campaign to prevent Pennsylvania communities from following the muni fiber path of Kutztown. We discuss several of the state battles over the years and the near passage of the Community Broadband Act by the U.S. Congress. Also, how some of the big telecom carriers started to invest in FTTH after the model was proved by community networks. We'll have Jim back for future shows as we continue charting the history of community owned networks. Read the transcript of 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 23 minutes long and can be played below on this page or via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

With a population of over 9,000 just across Puget Sound from Seattle, Poulsbo is a town with a lot of commuters and a vision for improved access to the Internet to allow more to reduce the physical need to travel. City Councilmember Ed Stern joins us for the 66th episode of Community Broadband Bits to discuss their plan. We talk about the history of Noanet and Kitsap Public Utility District investing in fiber networks, only to have the state legislature restrict the business models of such entities in a bid to protect private providers (that have repaid that kindness by refusing to invest in much of the state). Unable to achieve its vision for a fiber network, Poulsbo has since created an ordinance to increase the amount of conduit in the community for future projects and embarked on an open access mesh wireless project. See our full coverage of Poulsbo. Read the transcript from our 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 19 minutes long and can be played below on this page or via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Holyoke Gas & Electric has been connecting community anchor institutions and local businesses in Western Massachusetts with fiber networks for years. Rather than using exception access to the Internet as a competitive advantage over more poorly connected neighbors, the Municipal Light Plant (in the parlance of Massachusetts law) is helping nearby towns to establish their own networks. I met Senior Network Engineer Tim Haas in a lunch with people building community owned networks in Leverett and Princeton in late August. He joins me for episode #65 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. We discuss the Holyoke approach, its network, and enthusiasm for assisting others in the region to improve access to the Internet. Read the transcript of our 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 17 minutes long and can be played below on this page or via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

The small town of Windom in southwest Minnesota has long been one of the smallest FTTH networks in the nation. I have long wanted to bring WindomNet General Manager Dan Olsen on our show because it has some of the best anecdotes in the world of community owned networks. We finally got him! To understand WindomNet, you should know that it has fewer households than what many of us consider to be the minimum threshold for a viable triple-play FTTH network. Not only have they made it work, they have attracted numerous employers to town, as our interview discusses. It also kept a local employer located just outside of town in the area after a massive telelphone company operating in Minnesota found itself unable to provide the service that business requested. Tiny Windom ran a fiber out to the business and kept them in the region. The network has expanded to nearby farm towns with the help of a broadband stimulus award. Even now, after bringing connections to a rural region that the big providers have largely ignored, the big cable and CenturyLink lobbyists that live in the capital in Saint Paul have relentlessly lied about Windom, calling it a failure and presenting skewed figures to suggest the investment had not succeeded. In our discussion, Dan and I explore the reality of WindomNet and how it is benefiting a much larger region beyond its own borders. Read all of our coverage about Windom here. Read the transcript for 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 18 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Jim Baller is back again for the second show in our series on the history of municipal broadband networks. He is the President of the Baller Herbst Law Group in Washington, DC, and a long time advocate for both community owned networks specifically and better access to the Internet for all more generally. We kicked this history series off on Episode 57 where we talked about some of the early community cable networks and how federal law came to allow states to preempt local authority. In this episode, we talk about the early FTTH networks in Chelan, Washingon; Bristol, Virginia; Kutztown, Pennsylvania; and Dalton, Georgia. We also talk about how the states began restricting local investments, particularly in Pennsylvania under pressure from Verizon. We will continue the series in subsequent episodes. 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. Read the transcript of this episode here. This show is 18 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Lisa Gonzalez and I are back with another back and forth reaction to some of the crazy claims made by opponents of community owned Internet networks. This is something we started with Episode 50 and continued in Episode 55. For volume 3 of our Crazy Talk series, we address some recent claims made in opinion pieces, including the obviously-written-by-a-lobbyists op-ed in the Baltimore Sun and signed by Maryland State Senator Pugh. We talk about claims that Chattanooga has failed (in which we recommend you go back to listen to episode 59 - our conversation with Chattanooga. We dissect the claims that the US already has robust competition and that having several 4G wireless networks in any way impacts the wireline cable and DSL the vast majority of Americans are stuck with it. And finally, we talk about Provo and why it is suddenly the most cited network by those opposing community owned networks. Read the transcript 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. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

The Prometheus Radio Project is an impressive grassroots organization that has successfully opened the radio airwaves to communities after big corporations had effectively locked up unused radio channel for years. Prometheus Policy Director Sanjay Jolly joins us for Episode #61 of our Community Broadband Bits podcast. Our conversation ranges from the recent history of pirate radio to the many years of actions and organizing that led to the 2010 Local Community Radio Act. Local groups have an opportunity this fall to apply for licenses to broadcast - a capacity that would well complement a community owned Internet network. The struggle for community radio has many parallels to community owned Internet networks, particularly the right of people to communicate without a few massive corporations acting as gatekeepers, mediating our broadcasts. Additionally, community radio advocates had to fight through years of junk science and misinformation hiding the plain fact that powerful broadcasters simply didn't want to face competition from locally owned stations. Seems familiar. Read the transcript of 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. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

The Spanish Fork Community Fiber Network (SFCN) is an incredibly successful HFC cable network in Utah. It delivers television, telephone, and Internet access at incredibly low rates to most of the community despite competition from Comcast. Located south of Provo, Spanish Fork has a population of 35,000. Director of Information Systems and SFCN Director John Bowcut joins us for episode 60 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. We discuss why they built the network in 2000. Funded with 15 year bonds, the network mortgage is nearly retired. In the meantime, the network generates an extra million in revenue for the local government and keeps over $2 million in the community each year with its low rates that force competitors to keep rates lower than they otherwise would. Read the transcript of 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 27 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here. Find more episodes in our podcast index. Thanks to Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Chattanooga's EPB Fiber is the highest profile community network in the U.S. It was the first network in the nation to offer a symmetrical gigabit tier to every last address in the community. On today's Community Broadband Bits podcast, Danna Bailey joins us to discuss the network. Danna Bailey is EPB's Vice President of Corporate Communications and has long helped behind the scenes to keep our site informed of Chattanooga's progress. We talk about why Chattanooga built the network and the role of the stimulus award for smart grid in expediting the build out long after the project had started. We also talk about job growth - both large firms and small entreprenurs locating in Chattanooga while citing the community fiber network as a big part of the reason. The conversation updates the Chattanooga case study we published last year. Chattanooga remains far ahead of its business plan and is doing very well financially. Read all the stories we have published about Chattanooga here. Read the transcript from this episode. 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 Break the Bans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.