background preloader

Local community broadband, radio

Facebook Twitter

'The Dream of Internet Freedom is Dying,' Warns Top Civil Liberties Attorney. Jennifer Granick, addressing security professionals at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on August 5, said "the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers" are allowing the government to push for even more regulation and control of the Internet.

'The Dream of Internet Freedom is Dying,' Warns Top Civil Liberties Attorney

(Photo: Lily Hay Newman via Slate) "The dream of Internet freedom is... dying," said attorney and civil liberties expert Jennifer Granick during her keynote speech before a major computer security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Granick, formally the civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and now the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, was addressing some of the world's foremost technology experts attending the annual Black Hat information security event this week. Japanese Scientists Transmit Electricity Wirelessly Through the Air.

Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination. Phone Co-op brings first ethical smartphone to UK market. UK / Economics & Innovation 10 Nov 2014 Photo © Fairphone.

Phone Co-op brings first ethical smartphone to UK market

Decorah, Iowa, Considers the Future of MetroNet. Decorah, named an "All-Star Community" in part due to benefits from their internal fiber network, is now exploring new ways to utilize MetroNet.

Decorah, Iowa, Considers the Future of MetroNet

According to a recent Decorah Newspapers article, the six community anchor institutions (CAIs) that collaborated to deploy the network recently met with the city council to discuss the future. The 11-mile network began serving CAIs and an additional 18 facilities in 2013. After a 2008 flood that knocked out communications, the city, county, and school district began planning for the network. Eventually, the project grew to include Luther College, the Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission, and the Winneshiek Medical Center. The History Of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology For The Masses by Ira Brodsky. History of Wireless by Tapan K. Sarkar. A note from Cindy. Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination.

Victory for Municipal Broadband: FCC Sides with Communities in Internet Access Fight. On Thursday, ahead of its historic vote to protect net neutrality, another "watershed moment" came when the Federal Communications Commission moved in favor of consumers by giving cities the power to create their own internet networks.

Victory for Municipal Broadband: FCC Sides with Communities in Internet Access Fight

In a major victory for public alternatives to service provider giants, the FCC voted 3-2 to pass rules that kill state limits on municipal broadband rules in North Carolina and Tennessee. The petitioners charged that the limits prevented alternative, publicly-owned broadband providers from competing with major ISP companies like Comcast and Verizon by forbidding operators from building high-speed networks beyond a certain geographical point or offering lower-priced plans than private carriers—rules which largely affect consumers in rural and under-served areas.

These Cities Built Cheap, Fast, Community-Owned Broadband. Here's What Net Neutrality Means For Them by Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna — YES! Magazine. Just before his State of the Union address last month, President Obama showed up in the small city of Cedar Falls, Iowa, to highlight the work of Cedar Falls Utilities, a publicly owned utility that operates an Internet network in the city.

These Cities Built Cheap, Fast, Community-Owned Broadband. Here's What Net Neutrality Means For Them by Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna — YES! Magazine

Cedar Falls has one of the oldest community-owned networks in the country and, with recent upgrades, is now one of the fastest. In addition to having higher-speed connections than neighboring communities in Iowa, the publicly owned network’s more than 11,000 subscribers pay around $200 less per year. While in Cedar Falls the President stated his opposition to the spread of corporate-backed state laws banning local communities from operating their own networks. An accompanying White House report highlighted several community broadband success stories, including efforts in Chattanooga, Tenn., Wilson, N.C., and Lafayette, La. —all of which further document the possibilities of a forward-looking community broadband strategy.

FCC Vote And the Internet Goes Wild... FCC Vote Enshrines Net Neutrality Protections. Updated (11:55 AM EST): The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday, in a 3-2 vote, approved the reclassification of the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act.

FCC Vote And the Internet Goes Wild... FCC Vote Enshrines Net Neutrality Protections

CREDO Mobile: the Progressive Phone Company. Community Connectivity Toolkit. Many people have come to us for advice on how to get started on an effort to improve Internet connectivity.

Community Connectivity Toolkit

This is a working document with some suggestions and places to get ideas. Please let us know if you have suggestions or additional comments by emailing us - broadband@muninetworks.org. Tim Berners-Lee: We must take to the streets to protect the open web – video. Pocket-Sized Lantern Connects You to the World Even When There's No Internet Service. An estimated 4.3 billion people around the world don’t have internet access.

Pocket-Sized Lantern Connects You to the World Even When There's No Internet Service

In times of natural disasters, internet and phone connections also frequently fail. Lantern is a pocket-sized device designed to bring connectivity to those without internet access, using satellite-broadcast radio waves. The company behind Lantern, Outernet, aims to provide users with an anonymous, portable library that constantly receives free data from space. The device is currently acing its Indiegogo campaign, so read on for details on becoming an early adopter. So how does Lantern work? Related: Facebook Unveils Plans for Solar-Powered Internet Drones as Big as 747s. The Fairphone. Living sustainably and ethically is somewhat difficult in our modern age.

The Fairphone

Growing your own food, building your own home and reducing, reusing and recycling are all ways we choose to live more sustainably. But when it comes to technology, there is rarely a sustainable and ethical option. Phone Co-op brings first ethical smartphone to UK market. Responding to Crazy Talk: Arguments Against FCC Restoring Local Authority - Community Broadband Bits Episode 120. 21 Technologies That Will Decentralize the World. The Birth of Community Broadband - Video. Ham Radio For Dummies (For Dummies by H. Ward Silver.

Welcome to the Vernon Telephone Cooperative! Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination. HamTestOnline - Ham Radio Exam Courses and Practice Tests. Allied Fiber - America's All-Access Network. Mountain Connect. Fiber as Real Estate - Allied Fiber on Episode 104 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. Center For Digital Democracy. FCC net neutrality: Exclusive fast lanes could change the Internet entirely. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Last Thursday, the FCC proposed authorizing Verizon to make an exclusive deal with MSNBC making it the exclusive premium news provider for everyone accessing the Internet through Verizon.

FCC net neutrality: Exclusive fast lanes could change the Internet entirely.

Perhaps MSNBC’s website would load instantly, its video load smoothly, and none of it would count against your bandwidth cap. Other news sites would load slowly, and their use would count against your caps. OK, that proposal didn’t actually happen. Net Neutrality’s Legal Binary: an Either/Or With No “Third Way” People working on net neutrality wish for a “third way”–a clever compromise giving us both network neutrality and no blowback from AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others. That dream is delusional because the carriers will oppose network neutrality in any real form; they want paid fast lanes. They have expressed particular opposition to “Title II” of the Communications Act—something telecom lawyers mention the same way normal people might reference the First or Second Amendments.

Title II is the one essential law to ban paid fast lanes. All legal “third way” proposals have struck me as legally flawed and too clever by half. This Tool Boosts Your Privacy by Opening Your Wi-Fi to Strangers. Getty In an age of surveillance anxiety, the notion of leaving your Wi-Fi network open and unprotected seems dangerously naive. But one group of activists says it can help you open up your wireless internet and not only maintain your privacy, but actually increase it in the process. At the Hackers on Planet Earth conference next month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to release software designed to let you share a portion of your Wi-Fi network, password-free, with anyone nearby.

Neutrality Begins At Home: What U.S. Mayors Can Do Right Now to Support a Neutral Internet. The FCC Is About to Axe-Murder Net Neutrality. April 24, 2014 | Our 10 Tips for Reinvigorating Local Democracy - in one place. Peter MacFadyen is a founder of Sustainable Frome (a Transition initiative) and Director of Frome's new Renewable Energy Co-op. How To Save Equal Access on the Internet. Publicly owned networks in cities across the US preserve net neutrality and provide quality service It is instructive that the first gigabit Internet network was built not by a private company but bythe city of Chattanooga for its municipally owned network. We Know How to Save the Internet: Towns and Cities Across America Are Doing It. Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination. Zydeco and Justice: Louisiana's Hyperlocal KOCZ Builds Community and Self-Reliance by Christine St. Pierre.

Low-power FM radio stations bring a much-needed focus on local issues and culture. posted Jun 11, 2014. Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination. Helping Communities Achieve True Self-Determination. In Kansas, Chanute Explores FTTH Options. Last December, we reported on Chanute's decision to move forward with plans for a FTTH network. The community has a fiber and wireless network in place that serves utilities, public facilities such as libraries and schools, and several businesses. The network also provides free Wi-Fi across the community.