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Aurora, Illinois, has been named one of the “Smart 21” most intelligent communities of 2015 according to the Intelligent Community Forum. We have been tracking Aurora for a few years and wrote about OnLight, its nonprofit ISP, that we wrote about earlier this year.
With some 200,000 people, it is the second largest city in Illinois but it has one of the most interesting hybrids of municipal fiber and nonprofit partnerships we have come across. For this week's Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast, Lisa Gonzalez takes the reins and interviews Rick Mervine, Alderman of the 8th Ward in Aurora.
Alderman Mervine explains why the city first invested in the fiber network and why they later decided to create OnLight to serve community anchor institutions as well as others in the community.
Read the transcript of this episode here.
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Thanks to Jessie Evans for the music, licensed using Creative Commons. The song is “Is it Fire?”