Latest Fiberoptics Podcast Episodes
Wading Through Federal Funding Streams - Episode 572 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - October 10, 2023 11:56 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Brent Christensen, President and CEO of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA). The MTA is a trade association that currently represents 41 holding company members operating over 70 companies across the state, including cooperatively-owned...
Net Neutrality and the Regulatory Theater of the FCC - Episode 571 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - October 03, 2023 21:21 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Karl Bode, a returning guest who has long covered tech and the telecommunications industry. They talk about the history of net neutrality, the landmark decision by the Commission in 2015, the states that stepped in to fill the void, and...
Hope and Change (Redux) - Episode 570 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - September 26, 2023 18:58 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast we bring back a fan favorite that feels particularly relevant. Christopher is joined by Harold Feld, Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge. The show takes on a reflective nature, as they talk about theories of change in the context of doing broadband policy ...
A Scattering of Wonks - Episode 569 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - September 19, 2023 21:37 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, we bring over a conversation from our Connect This! Show, where Christopher is joined by a ground of policy experts to talk about why we don't see more cities doing deals with entities like Google Fiber, what we can expect now that Anna Gomez has been confirmed...
A Stately Tour of BEAD Plans - Episode 568 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - September 12, 2023 22:03 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the show, Christopher is joined once again by Sean Gonsalves. After a short stop to talk about the establishment of a new municipal network in Timnath, Colorado, Christopher and Sean get down to talking about the BEAD 5-Year Plans that states are filing with NTIA to get the...
Mona Thompson Reflects on a Career of Visionary Work in Tribal Telecommunications - Episode 567 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - September 05, 2023 16:59 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 mill...
Loveland’s Municipal Network is Scrappy and Driven to Serve its Community - Episode 566 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - August 22, 2023 14:33 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Brieana Reed-Harmel, Municipal Fiber Manager for the City of Loveland, located in Colorado’s Northern Front Range about an hour north of Denver. The city is home to over 80,000 residents as well as a municipal fiber broadband network cal...
Digital Equity Starts in Our Cities and Towns - Episode 565 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - August 15, 2023 14:14 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the show we're featuring an episode of our Building for Digital Equity podcast, with Brandon Forester - the National Organizer for Internet Rights at Media Justice - joining Christopher to talk about helping communities build more agency over how technology shows up in thei...
The Last Train - Episode 564 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - August 08, 2023 16:38 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsWe're more than 15 years and a hundred billion dollars into the alphabet soup of federal broadband infrastructure subsidy programs, and millions upon millions of households are stuck on deteriorating connections and capacity-constrained technologies. This week on the podcast, Christophe...
Doubling the Number of Municipal Networks in the Next Five Years - Episode 563 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - July 31, 2023 14:50 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsMay 2022 witnessed something remarkable: the birth of a new nonprofit advocacy organization whose sole purpose was to speak up for the hundreds of communities that have built municipal broadband networks, and the thousands more that want to but don't know where to start. Now, the Americ...
A Challenge A Day Will Make BEAD Go Our Way - Episode 562 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - July 25, 2023 21:47 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Christine Parker (Senior GIS Analyst at ILSR), and Meghan Grabill (Geospatial Analyst at the Maine Connectivity Authority) to run through the recently announced NTIA location challenge process for the upcoming BEAD program and talk abou...
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, Trojan Horse Networks, and Flowering BUDs - Episode 561 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - July 18, 2023 14:27 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Sean Gonsalves to chat about the astroturf anti-municipal misinformation campaign being run by the Utah Taxpayer's Association, how a city negotiated a capital fee it's using to build its own network and get out from under Comcast's th...
Mason PUD 3 is Snaking Its Way Through the Unserved and Underserved Parts of Washington State - Episode 560 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - July 11, 2023 20:08 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Justin Holzgrove and Mike Rientjes from Mason County Public Utility District 3 in Washington State. The PUD provides electric service to more than 35,000 households across an area the size of Rhode Island, and began connecting its grid...
How Rural Internet Access is Being Transformed by Electric Cooperatives - Episode 559 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - July 05, 2023 21:12 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsElectric cooperatives overwhelmingly serve regions that face population density challenges and income disparities as compared to their urban counterparts, as well as all of the other challenges that go with it: declining populations, hospital closures, increasingly frequent extreme weat...
The Public Utility District Taking on the Olympic Peninsula - Episode 558 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - June 27, 2023 20:53 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Will O'Donnell, Broadband and Communications Director at Jefferson County Public Utility District in Washington State, to talk about the Herculean task facing the PUD: how to deploy an open access fiber network to the utility's 21,000 m...
Demand Driven by the People in Kitsap County, Washington - Episode 557 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - June 20, 2023 20:15 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by three members from the Kitsap Public Utility District's open access FTTH team in Washington state to talk about the formation of Local Utility Districts, managing an open access network seeing increased demand, and the value of increase...
How the Core Values of Small ISPs Contribute to Internet Access and Digital Equity for All - Episode 556 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - June 13, 2023 14:00 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Angela Siefer (Executive Director, National Digital Inclusion Alliance) and Matt Larsen (CEO, Vistabeam) to talk about connecting the unconnected and doing digital equity work as a small Internet Service Provider (ISP). In a marketplace...
This Is Not the National Broadband Map We Were Promised - Episode 555 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - June 08, 2023 19:20 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsIt's strange to see the FCC continually patting itself on the back for releasing a new national broadband map. Spend just a little bit of time with it, and the cracks and holes quickly show themselves. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Christine Parker, Senior GIS Anal...
Filling in Connectivity Gaps with Open Access Fiber - Episode 554 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - May 30, 2023 17:22 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Keith Quarles, President and CFO of A2D, a fiber-based, open access competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). A2D stands for ‘Analog to Digital,’ and as Keith explains, represents the infrastructure transition from analog to digital com...
Approaches to Digital Equity Work in Cleveland and Detroit - Episode 553 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - May 23, 2023 19:44 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Joshua Edmonds, CEO of DigitalC, a nonprofit technology social enterprise in Cleveland. DigitalC offers affordable wireless service for $18/month, as well as a co-working and collaboration space for the community. Joshua served as Detr...
Axiom Technologies’ Public Ownership Model for Connecting Communities in Rural Maine - Episode 552 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - May 16, 2023 18:23 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher tunes in from Broadband Communities in Houston for an interview with Mark Ouellette, CEO of Axiom Technologies. Axiom is an Internet Service Provider based in Machias, Maine, the county seat for the large, rural county of Washington along the state’...
Joey Wender and the Treasury's Capital Project Funds - Episode 551 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - May 09, 2023 19:25 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Joey Wender, Director of the Capital Projects Fund (CPF), U.S Department of the Treasury. Joey administers the $10 billion fund targeted to help close the digital divide on behalf of the Biden Administration. Joey and Chris discuss the ...
Changing the Legislative Landscape of Texas - Episode 550 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - May 01, 2023 20:10 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Outreach Team Lead DeAnne Cuellar and John Speirs, Harris County, Texas' (pop. 4.7 million) Broadband Manager. Its county seat, Houston, is home to one of the largest ports in the world, and citizens and elected officials are working on...
Broadband as the Fifth Utility in Knoxville - Episode 549 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - April 25, 2023 20:58 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jamie Davis, CTO of KUB Fiber, the broadband division of the Knoxville Utilities Board in Tennessee. The division is poised to be halfway done with a build across its footprint by June 2024, hitting 90,000 premises, with plans to steam ...
Building and Sustaining a Tribal Network Surrounded by Mountains and Mesas - Episode 548 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - April 19, 2023 21:55 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Kevin Shendo, Education Director at the Pueblo of Jemez Department of Education, and Angela Diakah, Network Operations Supervisor at Jemez Pueblo Tribal Network (JPTN). JPTN is a wireless network serving more than 500 households in the ...
Finding the Right Partners and Platforms - Episode 547 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - April 11, 2023 21:03 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Claudia Tarbell, Senior Engagement Manager for Tribal, Indigenous and First Nation Communities and Michael Weening, President and CEO, both from Calix. Claudia shares what it was like to transition from working at Mohawk Networks to bec...
The Transformation of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative - Episode 546 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - April 04, 2023 13:38 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Alyssa Clemsen Roberts, President and CEO of New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC). Two and a half years ago, there were no plans to add broadband to its portfolio. Two membership votes and a new CEO later, and NHEC is building 25 ...
Modernizing a Tribal Network - Episode 545 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - March 28, 2023 19:29 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Kristan Johnson, Telephone Operations Manager of the Tohono O'odham Utility Authority (TOUA), which provides telephone, electric, water, gas, and Internet service to a large portion of those living throughout the Tohono O'odham Nation i...
Lessons from a Rural County - Episode 544 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - March 21, 2023 19:31 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the show, Christopher is joined by Senior Researcher Ry Marcattilio for a conversation about on-the-ground work in a rural county in Minnesota. After joining a listening session with local elected officials, the district representative, and the broadband action team, Christ...
Building Frontline Digital Equity Tools at Education Superhighway - Episode 543 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
Community Broadband Bits - March 14, 2023 21:54 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 25 ratingsThis week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Evan Marwell (CEO) and Jenny Miller (Director of Government Affairs), from the nonprofit Education Superhighway. Begun as an organization aimed at improving Internet access for schools, today Education Superhighway focuses its efforts o...
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