Today, Thursday November 8 2018, Next Century Cities hosts Connected New England – Local Solutions for #Broadband Development in Hartford CT. This one day event brings together broadband champions from federal, state, and local government, as well as community leaders and policy experts. Features include a mayors’ panel, successful models in broadband deployment, E-Rate and funding opportunities, 5G and small cells, as well as an update about the recent municipal gain ruling in Connecticut. The event will be webcast live on the Internet Society Livestream Channel.
Last OneWebDay – Sep 22 2011 – ISOC-NY hosted the Bob Frankston talk: Infrastructure commons – the future of connectivityin which he laid out the “Frankston Doctrine” – the heretical view that communities should build and operate their own communications infrastructure, entirely dispensing with telcos and usage-based billing. Long a lone voice in the wilderness, Frankston’s ideas are now beginning to get some love. On Valentine’s Day – Feb 14 2012 – OneWebDay founder Susan Crawford used her Bloomberg column The Case for Publicly Owned Internet Service to rail against State laws that prohibit municipal broadband initiatives.
The telecom industry has reached its peak. This is it. Look around you. Whatever you are doing in telecom, however you are making money in the field, it isn’t going to get better than this. This industry has acquired its maximum share of the economy. We are the digital railroad business at the height of the railroad barons. The only way now is down. We’ll see maybe one or two more mini-booms, a few more troughs, but the long-term trend has just gone into reverse.
and concludes:
Home networks don’t need service providers. You just buy a box and plug it in. Street-level networks don’t either — you can build a simple resilient mesh. Nor do town networks that join the kids with their school. We fundamentally don’t need communications service providers to manage data transmission. As long as we have a means to fund infrastructure, just as we manage with roads, we can do it for ourselves.
This is the beginning of the end of the Information Superrailroad, where all the bits are scarce and billable. Broadband ISP service is a branch line to nowhere.
Unlicensed wireless is the automobile, and local open fibers are the roads. It doesn’t carry very much very far right now, but it will. And with it, the fate of the telecom industry as constituted today is sealed. Like with the railroads, telcos will carry ever more traffic, and will protect themselves with political power. But their heyday is over, and a new disruptive model has emerged.
On January 25 2012 the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) will host a ‘Digital Dialogue’ conference call: “Beyond Access: Owning Community Broadband Networks”.
This digital dialogue will feature experts and community members who have been working on the community broadband issue for many years. Participants are encouraged to think about possible broadband projects in their neighborhood as well as share any experiences they have with launching a network.
What: “Beyond Access: Owning Community Broadband Networks” When: Wednesday, January 25th 2012 – 10am PST/1pm EST (Length: 60 minutes) How: Free. RSVP to get a unique number for the call. Webcast: Call will be archived. Contact:betty@centerformediajustice.org Twitter:@mediaaction | #mediajustice | #CommunityBB
Moderator:
Betty Yu, Center for Media Justice Speakers:
Danielle Chynoweth, Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
Christopher Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Traci Morris, Native Public Media
The 6th annual global OneWebDay celebration will be Thursday September 22 2011. ISOC-NY’s contribution will be to host respected computer scientist and Internet iconoclast Bob Frankston who will present on the theme “Infrastructure commons – the future of connectivity”.
The subways, roads and sidewalks are vital infrastructure. The Internet should be no different – our economy, health and safety depend on our ability to communicate. Yet its provision and economy are based on outdated, inequitable, and inefficient telecom models. How do we move to a connected future?
We are happy to also announce that Dave Burstein of DSL Prime has agreed to moderate the session. Dave will also talk about the practicalities of establishing community networks.
The People’s Production House has embarked on producing a series of video narratives from New York City’s most active community organizing groups about why the Internet is important to their communities. The first is now online:
** We regret to say we have had to postpone this event as Antony Van Couvering is unable to attend. It will be rescheduled for sometime in May.**
Last October the NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT) issued a request for proposals for “services to obtain, manage, administer, maintain and market the geographic Top Domain name .nyc.”. At ICANN’s recent 37th meeting in Nairobi, consensus was reached on the “overarching” issue of intellectual property protection. This leaves only the issue of the final (4th) draft of the Applicants Guidebook, expected before the 38th meeting in Brussels in June 2010, before the much delayed new generic top level domain (gTLD) delegation process can finally grind into action. (One caveat – a policy forbidding cross-ownership of registries and registrars is still not totally set in stone.)
The Internet Society – New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) has for some years been following the .nyc and ICANN process on behalf of the NYC community and will, on Saturday April 10 2010, host a symposium “dot nyc – How are we doing?” at NYU. Vendors Eric Brunner-Williams of CORE Internet Council of Registrars and Antony Van Couvering of Minds + Machines will reveal details of their proposals to the City, after which there will be a discussion “What’s it for?” about possible applications – civic, community, commercial, and “outside the box” – for a local top level domain.
Recently Community Manager Brian DiFeo reached out to ISOC-NY and other local groups to offer the space for meetups. I finally got around to checking it out – it’s a beautiful space on the 13th floor of 55 Broad St. Totally convenient to 4/5, 2/3, N/R, J/M subways and well worth considering. There are large and small rooms all with WiFi and Projectors.
Today, Thursday November 8 2018, Next Century Cities hosts Connected New England – Local Solutions for #Broadband Development in Hartford CT. This one day event brings together broadband champions from federal, state, and local government, as well as community leaders and policy experts. Features include a mayors’ panel, successful models in broadband deployment, E-Rate and funding opportunities, 5G and small cells, as well as an update about the recent municipal gain ruling in Connecticut. The event will be webcast live on the Internet Society Livestream Channel.
Last October the NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT) issued a
Reply