Cities’ Fiber Announcements Are Great, ‘But No One Should Uncork the Champagne’
Our weeklong virtual conference, Ars UNITE, kicked off today with an examination of how city and town governments are going the extra mile to improve residential broadband.
After our feature on the topic—“Fed up, US cities take steps to build better broadband”—we hosted a live discussion with four experts: Blair Levin, a former FCC official who oversaw the development of the National Broadband Plan under President Obama and now the executive director of the Gig.U fiber initiative; Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance; Will Aycock, operations manager of Greenlight Community Broadband in Wilson, North Carolina; and Ted Smith, chief of the Civic Innovation office in Louisville, Kentucky.
Increasingly, cities control their broadband future—with both low- and high-tech methods.
To wrap up day one, let’s take a look at what readers and experts had to say. After a summary, we’ll post a lightly edited transcript of the live discussion.
More: Cities’ Fiber Announcements Are Great, ‘But No One Should Uncork the Champagne’