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This week on the podcast Christopher talks with Steve Lange, IT Manager for the city of Wadsworth (pop. 26,000) in eastern Ohio, which built its hybrid fiber-coax municipal network CityLink back in 1997. 

The two talk about the history of the network, its push to bring more competition to the town, and its operational structure — the network, unlike in many places, is separate from the city’s municipal electric department. Christopher and Steve also talk about the phenomenal momentum the network has built over the last few years, almost tripling it subscriber base to 5,400 this year, with Steve attributing this to their focus on thoughtful planning and customer service.

This show is 35 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Don’t forget to check out our new show, Connect This!, where Chris brings together a collection broadband veterans and industry experts live on YouTube to talk about recent events and dig into the policy news of the day. 

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jennifer Hawkins, President and Executive Director of One Neighborhood Builders (ONB), a community development organization based out of Rhode Island. She talks about about the Olneyville neighborhood, situated on the west side of Providence, and how significant health disparities in that community led her organization to jump into action over the summer to build a free wireless network for the residents. Jennifer and Christopher talk about mapping the network, placing hardware on ONB-owned buildings, and putting up 12 access points to cover more than half of the community with robust wireless. She shares why the project’s been worth it, and the health outcomes they hope to achieve once it goes online. 

This show is 31 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Don’t forget to check out our new show, Connect This!, where Chris brings together a collection broadband veterans and industry experts live on YouTube to talk about recent events and dig into the policy news of the day. 

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast, Christopher talks with Maureen Neighbors, Energy Division Chief of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, about the state’s one-of-a-kind, $100 million voucher program designed and deployed for the current school year to help get and keep economically vulnerable students connected. 

She tells Christopher how, with the help of CTC Energy and Technology, the state brought together more than three dozen Internet Service Providers (ISPs) — many of which are local companies — connected with school districts around the state, designed an online portal, and mailed out tens of thousands of brochures to households with students on the free or reduced lunch program to help those families to start new service or pay their existing broadband bill.  

Maureen shares the challenges they met (data and mapping are hard, and wrangling 37 ISPs equally so) and the satisfaction in helping more than 120,000 students (and counting!) stay connected to school during the ongoing pandemic.

This show is 32 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Don’t forget to check out our new show, Connect This!, where Chris brings together a collection broadband veterans and industry experts live on YouTube to talk about recent events and dig into the policy news of the day. 

Read the transcript for this episode.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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Despite repeated reminders from the rest of us that Hollywood will only ever give the late night slots to guys named James, Stephen, or Conan, Christopher is determined that if he just hosts enough things he’ll be able to break into the business and leave us all behind. In that spirit comes a new series here at the Community Broadband Networks initiative within the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Connect This! 

Each week (mostly!), a diverse panel of broadband policy experts and industry veterans will get together and talk about recent news, untangle regulations, demystify technology, dig into grant programs, and have a good time. Compared to the Broadband Bits podcast, Connect This! will range wider and encourage guests to find common ground on the complicated issues that collectively define our networked future. Episodes will have a set agenda and aim for less than an hour, and the plan is to bring at least one guest across two episodes in a row to provide some continuity. 

Follow us at ConnectThisShow.com, or subscribe via the podcast player of your choice using this link.

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This week on the podcast Christopher talks with Catherine Nicolaou, External Affairs and Marketing Manager for Sacred Wind Communications, a rural local exchange carrier in NW New Mexico that has been focused on serving the Navajo Nation communities there. She shares the history of Sacred Wind, from buying copper infrastructure from Century Link 13 years ago in a region where just 26% of the households had Internet access to its 400 miles of fiber infrastructure today, allowing it to bring broadband to more than 92% of those living there.

Catherine tells Christopher how the company has had to rely on the full array of technologies to bring broadband access to families in a large area with particular geographic and topographic challenges, from Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) to TV White Space (TVWS) to infrared to fixed wireless and, of course, Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH). They talk about what it means to Sacred Wind’s subscribers that the provider has never raised prices, and the work it’s been doing during the pandemic to make sure everyone gets and stays connected.

Don’t forget to check out our new show, Connect This!, where Chris brings together a collection broadband veterans and industry experts live on Youtube to talk about recent events and dig into the policy news of the day. 

This show is 30 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast Christopher talks with the city of Sandwich, New Hampshire’s Broadband Advisory Committee Chair Julie Dolan and member Richard Knox. The join us to discuss the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative’s recent vote to add broadband to its charter.

Sandwich is particularly poorly served in NH and they have been seeking solutions for a long time. In organizing around the electric cooperative (which covers 115 towns and includes 85,000 members), in less than a year local stakeholders have organizing two votes around the importance of quality Internet access which, at the beginning of October, pushed the co-op into the business. Julie and Richard share with Chris how it all unfolded and what it means moving forward.

Don’t forget to check out our new show, Connect This!, where Chris brings together a collection broadband veterans and industry experts live on Youtube to talk about recent events and dig into the policy news of the day. 

This show is 38 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast Christopher talks with Stacy Cantrell, Vice President of Engineering at Huntville Utilities in Alabama. Huntsville’s (pop. 197,000) municipal utility serves well beyond the city boundaries, and its electric department built a major network that gets close to every house within the city limits. 

Stacy shares how the 1,100-mile fiber project unfolded, what it took to overcome challenges, and how things are going now that they’re nearly done. The utility uses its network for internal services to bring value to those living in the city, but providers, of which Google will be the first, can lease that network and attach homes to it. 

This show is 29 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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A little over three years ago in Episode 232 we heard from Lyndon Township, Michigan just after a ballot initiative passed to fund and build a municipal network. 43% of the community turned out for the vote, and the measure passed by a ratio of two to one. 

Today we revisit Lyndon Township Broadband, with Christopher joined by Ben Fineman, President of the Michigan Broadband Initiative, as well as Jo Anne Munce, and Gary Munce, both of whom were essential in the ballot campaign and who volunteer with the broadband initiative.

Christopher catches up with what’s been going on since, and what things look like now that the network has almost everyone hooked up. The township owns the network, with area electric cooperative Midwest Energy and Communications operating it on a day-to-day basis. The group talks about the network’s phenomenal 75% take rate, the current state of its debt, and how it just increased speeds on two of the service tiers with no additional fees. Lyndon Township serves as a great example of a community that decided to tax itself for a fiber network and are reaping the rewards. 

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast Christopher welcomes back Lee Brown, President and CEO of Erwin Utilities, to talk about what’s been going on since we last spoke with them more than three and a half years ago. Erwin is a town of around 6,000 and the county seat of Unicoi County, Tennessee, along the state’s eastern border. 

The two revisit the success Erwin has seen with an incremental Fiber-to-the-Home buildout over the last six years. The utility at this point has no debt, and covers the whole town aside from one remaining pocket to be complete early next year. It has expanded into the county, bringing affordable 25mbps and gigabit Internet access to residents, and enjoys a take rate of nearly 50% . 

Lee reflects on the benefits of Erwin’s strategic approach to building a fiber network and lessons learned. In 2019 it completed the transition to becoming the Erwin Utilities Authority, which will give it flexibility moving into the future, and in April of this year connected its 3000th customer. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

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This week on the podcast Christopher welcomes back Will Aycock, General Manager of Wilson, North Carolina’s municipal network Greenlight, and Rebecca Agner, Communications and Marketing Director for the city of Wilson.

Christopher talks with the duo about what it took for the city to be named one of the ten best small towns in the country to start a business in 2019, and the city’s efforts to use its municipal infrastructure to launch an affordable new ridesharing initiative which takes into account social distancing needs and user cost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They also spend time discussing how Greenlight is spearheading efforts to make sure the county’s most economically vulnerable residents have options to connect in 2020, including a public housing initiative that makes sure low-income residents have an affordable, reliable connection and a flexpay program that gives residents the option to pay for small chunks of Internet access according to their means and needs. 

Finally, the group dives into the network’s future plans as it approaches paying off the last of its debt in the near future.

This show is 31 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript coming soon.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.

Subscribe to the Building Local Power podcast, also from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, on iTunes or Stitcher to catch more great conversations about local communities, the concentration of corporate power, and how everyday people are taking control.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.