Broadband Action

A key element of digital equity efforts is getting the right devices into the hands of people who need them. In this episode, Jon Willow and Curtis Dean with CBAN chat with Karisa Tashjian, Director of Programs at Digitunity, a non-profit that advocates for device ownership.

In this episode of Broadband Action, we chat with Deborah Simpier, CEO of Althea. Althea is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) platform and blockchain that enables the coordination of multi-stakeholder networks. Althea decouples the service and infrastructure layers of Internet delivery and coordinates transparent and programmatic revenue sharing.
Using Althea’s platform, networks can be built faster and more economically than ever before.
Althea’s flexible payment structure opens new markets and supports new entrants into the market, by enabling them to capitalize on underutilized bandwidth and real estate.

In this episode of Broadband Action, CBAN's Curtis Dean discusses how cable companies are working to fend off the threat from fiber by implementing new technologies that allow higher download and speeds over coaxial networks. Curtis also talks about how many fiber providers are beginning to offer multi-gigabit speed tiers.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has already helped millions of Americans get online through a monthly subsidy for internet service. However, adoption has been slow in many locations, and nationwide only 41 percent of eligible households have utilized the program. In this episode of Broadband Action, we visit with Sean Gonsolves and Ry Marcattilio with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has created an ACP Dashboard to track enrollment in the ACP and how fast the available funds are being used.

Doug Dawson with CCG Consulting is one of the broadband industry's true thought leaders. For the second year in a row, Doug joins Curtis Dean with CBAN to look into his crystal ball for some broadband predictions for 2023. Check out Pots and Pans, Doug's blog, for more topics of interest!

One of the biggest challenges with deploying the over $42 billion in funding under the BEAD program is making sure we have accurate broadband maps. Many industry experts are skeptical that the FCC can get it right this time. For this episode of Broadband Bytes our guest is Sascha Meinrath, Director of the X-Lab and Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State University. He’s been collecting broadband performance data for years and discusses how the FCC is trying to recreate information that he and others have already gathered.

Voters in Waterloo, Iowa will be going to the polls on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 to vote on a bond referendum. At issue is the City’s plans to issue up to $20 million in general obligation, or GO, bonds to finance a portion of a planned fiber-to-the-home network in the northeast Iowa City of 67,000. If voters approve the bond issue - and if the network is built - it would be the largest municipal broadband utility in Iowa, edging out its neighbor to the west, Cedar Falls.

On this episode of Broadband Action we visit with Maggie Burger, Senior Vice President at Speer Financial, Inc - the city’s municipal advisor for this project.