Lisa Gonzalez

In Oct, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly accused municipal networks, including Chattanooga’s EPB Fiber Optics, of violating the First Amendment by limiting subscribers free speech. Journalists and organizations who know better were quick to correct him. In a Dec 13, 2018 blog post, he lashed out at his critics and tried to defend or explain his earlier comments, but once again missed the mark.

This election season, Comcast is once again devoting funds to an investment it considers necessary - influencing elections in Seattle (WA) and Fort Collins (CO).  In Seattle, Comcast and CenturyLink have donated $50,000 to a political action committee that supports a candidate opposed to publicly owned Internet infrastructure. In our analysis, we’ve run a range of possible scenarios and offered both a conservative Comcast loss estimate and figures based on higher loss of subscribership.

Residents in the Lookout Lane neighborhood of Kitsap County, Washington, tired of shoddy DSL so they joined forces to take advantage of publicly-owned fiber. By the end of 2016, this group of organized neighbors anticipates connecting to the Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD) open access fiber network.

The town of Pinetops (NC) has a six-month reprieve. On Oct 20, the Wilson (NC) City Council voted to continue to provide telephone and Internet access to customers outside of Wilson County, which includes Pinetops, for an additional six months at no charge.

As we reported earlier, the City Council had been backed into a corner by state law, which would force them to discontinue Wilson’s municipal Greenlight service, or risk losing their exemption entirely. In August, the Sixth Circuit for the US Court of Appeals reversed the Federal Communications Commission decision to preempt North Carolina’s state law that prevented Greenlight from serving nearby Pinetops. When Hurricane Matthew struck Pinetops, however, the Wilson community could not fathom piling yet another burden - lack of high-quality Internet access - on the struggling rural community. The situation is not permanent, say Wilson's leaders, but it will give the community of Pinetops a chance to recover from Hurricane Matthew.

Local governments in Minnesota have been at the forefront of expanding fast, affordable, and reliable Internet access - often in some of the most challenging areas of the state.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just released a policy brief to explore some of these approaches: . The brief examines five communities that have taken different approaches to expanding access, from working with a trusted local partner to creating a new cooperative to building community-wide fiber-to-home networks.