Category: dark fiber

Community Broadband Bits 26 – Josh Wallace, Palo Alto

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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 [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] 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

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Dewayne Hendricks has returned for his second appearance on the Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] 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 21 – Benoit Felten on Stokab

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For this week's Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary], we venture outside the U.S. to interview Benoit Felten of Diffraction Analysis about the Stokab muni fiber network in Stockholm, Sweden. Stokab appears to be the most successful open access fiber network in the world.

Benoit has just published a case study of Stokab and is an expert on broadband networks around the planet. Our discussion covers how Stokab was built and what lessons it has for other cities. Because Stokab was started so long ago, other local governments will find they cannot simply duplicate it — times have changed.

Benoit also writes regularly at Fiberevolution and can be found on twitter @fiberguy. Benoit and I last appeared together in a roundtable discussion about bandwidth caps.

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 30 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 Fit and the Conniptions for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Community Broadband Bits 4 – Kevin Kryzda, CIO of Martin County, Florida

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The fourth episode of Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bit[/no-glossary]s features Kevin Kryzda from Martin County, Florida. We discuss their county-owned network that is saving millions of dollars for the community — as detailed in our case study published last month.

Activists that want to encourage publicly owned broadband in their communities should familiarize themselves with the cost savings and advantages from Martin County's approach. Though Martin County is serving schools, libraries, and public safety, it does not serve residents and businesses with services directly. However, this could be the first step for other communities before they do offer such services to everyone.

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 a different tool using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!

Listen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 directly from here.

Read the transcript of this episode here.

Find more episodes in our podcast index.

Thanks to Fit and the Conniptions for the music.