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Breaking Down Silos and Unifying The Experience
A theme of the Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit was the cloud as central to smart energy realities. The inherent nature of cloud computing, coupled with broadband, will break down the silos between different types of services. Melissa Duchin, Research Analyst for Parks Associates, discusses this and other take-aways from the Smart Energy Summit in…
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One Size Doesn’t Fit All
“One of the things the FCC Transformation Order has failed to address is the value piece of telephone service; one size fits all is not the way it is,” said MTA president and CEO Brent Christensen. In this interview, Christensen reflects on the interactive video conference with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn that he co-moderated with…
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Looking Back at an Early Digital Divide
Tom Seale, former CFO of Buford Media and early board member of ACA, talks about the formation of the ACA, the motivation for and the challenges of organizing independent cable operators into an association. He points out that there was a digital divide that existed between the smaller and larger operators at that time. Now, In…
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3 Tips for Building Community Broadband – Part 2
In part 2 of this two-part interview, Dr. Tim Nulty suggests that those wishing to replicate ecFiber.net‘s rural broadband network build-out should follow these three basic steps: Develop a lean business plan and and a lean network. Organize an institution that can implement the plan and maintain the network. He describes an interesting public-private partnership to…
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Comments on a Conversation with an FCC Commissioner
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn made a virtual appearance at the 2013 MTA Annual Convention. In this interview, NTCA president and CEO Shirley Bloomfield recaps the conversation that she and MTA president/CEO, Brent Christensen, had with Commissioner Clyburn. Regulatory uncertainty caused by the FCC order, naked DSL, call completion, the importance of fiber to making wireless work, small…
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Bootstrapping an All Fiber Network – Part 1
“You can’t conduct your life with dial-up; this [broadband] isn’t a luxury question,” said Dr. Tim Nulty of ecFiber.net. In part one of this two-part interview, he explains how one community is bootstrapping the creation of an all fiber network in a very rural part of Vermont. His comments, made in April 2012, were prescient…
