Network management

City Utilities, Springfield's (MO) city-owned electric utility, recently announced plans to expand its fiber optic network to every home in the city and lease excess fiber—on a nonexclusive basis—to the internet service provider (ISP) CenturyLink. CenturyLink, in turn, will offer high-speed fiber broadband services citywide and pay for marketing and customer service costs.

New York City unveiled a massive new Internet Master Plan in Jan that experts say is the largest and most aggressive local broadband improvement project in US history. If successful, the city's proposal could become a template for other towns and cities looking to improve broadband access and provide a leg up to regional economies.

In its quest for solutions and partnerships, the New York City's Internet Master Plan is a sharp contrast to the Federal Communications Commission’s approach, which started with the idea that the primary tool for deploying next generation networks was deregulation, and that cities themselves were the major cause of most delays.

The organization managing .org addresses is Public Interest Registry (PIR). It’s one of several so-called top-level registrars managing the internet’s address book on behalf of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Now, PIR could be sold to a for-profit company that’s attracted protesters and the attention of California’s attorney general. Since its creation in 2002, PIR has been part of a nonprofit called The Internet Society.

Remaining globally competitive in the digital age will require a highly skilled workforce, genuine digital security, and fast and reliable telecommunications networks—all areas directly impacted by infrastructure policy. However, there are still millions of Americans who do not have basic digital skills, do not have direct access to computing equipment, and do not have personal access to a broadband connection. Many rural and metropolitan neighborhoods do not have any high-speed connections, putting every business there at a disadvantage.

Most of us think of the internet as existing “virtually,” yet cyberspace requires a physical infrastructure that is mostly hidden from view. And it requires workers to go under city streets to tie things together. They run fiber-optic cables—incredibly thin strands of glass that carry the super-fast data signals providing high-speed internet, or “broadband,” service—and connect them underground to commercial buildings. There are many things that wouldn’t be the same without broadband. Here’s a look at 10 things broadband has brought to, or changed about, the world:

Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg said that the company is installing 1400 miles of fiber per month and that it will begin offering multi-access edge computing (MEC) in fourth quarter. Verizon fiber deployments are critical to supporting a mixture of services, Vestberg said. “One part of the whole intelligent edge network was that . . .

Microtrenching – using microtrenches just 1 to 3 inches wide and 5 to 12 inches deep – has become a mainstream method for installing fiber, and many network operators use it successfully under certain conditions. City planners and engineers use the technique to leverage overcrowded utility corridors in right of ways, providing more high-speed broadband services to meet the demands of the growing population. Suppliers speak about the products they offer for microtrenching and where they think those products might best be used.

Backed by the Justice Department, the Federal Communications Commission as told the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that it knew what it was doing when it deregulated pole attachments, and had the authority to do it. The FCC voted in Aug 2018 (unanimously, though with one partial dissent) to adopt various reforms related to new broadband attachments on utility poles. The petitioners, a group of electric utilities companies, challenged the FTC's authority to undertake the reforms in Oct.

The Wall Street Journal studied the internet use of 53 of our journalists across the country, over a period of months, in coordination with researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. Our panelists used only a fraction of their available bandwidth to watch streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, even simultaneously. Quality didn’t improve much with higher speeds. Picture clarity was about the same. Videos didn’t launch quicker.