Broadband Communities

The emerging model presents a scalable option for communities that lack the expertise or interest to operate networks or act as ISPs themselves but want to own and control the core communications assets in their communities as a means of securing the benefits of broadband internet. Here’s a look at the model’s business case, technical elements and risks.

Open-access networks could revolutionize the US broadband industry for consumers and for the municipalities in which they operate. When utilized to its maximum capacity, a fiber network can provide the backbone to economic development and improved quality of life for residents and deliver a full array of smart-city applications that enable a city to become more efficient, environmentally friendly, and desirable to prospective residents and businesses. Many cities want fiber networks to support smart-city applications.

Here are a few things a community can do to show an ISP that it wants it:

Lack of good broadband access is a strong predictor of childhood poverty. That’s the finding of Broadband Communities’ recent analysis combining county-level broadband data it has collected since 2010 with comprehensive, county-level poverty data compiled by the nonprofit organization Save the Children. We looked at overall poverty rankings, and, with sensitivities heightened because of the current need for distance learning, we also analyzed high school graduation patterns.

A growing number of government programs support broadband deployment. Some programs allow service providers to combine, or “stack,” subsidies in a project’s funding; others have prohibitions against stacking subsidies built into the program rules. Recently this has come up in the debate on the Federal Communications Commission’s new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). This is the question: Should stacking be allowed, or should it be discouraged? Just how does a provider stack subsidies?

BroadbandNow is proposing a new definition for broadband internet – increasing download speeds by fourfold to 100 Mbps and upload speeds by 8X to 25 Mbps. Currently, the FCC definition of broadband internet is a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds. The benchmark has not changed since 2015.