Policymakers should use localities as test beds for different bro...
Policymakers should use localities as test beds for different broadband technologies, said President-elect Joanne Hovis of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors. Localities aren’t tied to legacy investments or business models, so they are “an important opportunity…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
for experimentation and innovation,” she said Thursday at an FCC workshop about fiber. Municipal networks can offer greater value than commercial networks for anchor institutions like schools, Hovis said. In Montgomery County, Md., many elementary schools get 100 Mbps broadband through fiber built by the county, she said. “The operating cost to the county, which does not charge the schools, is $71 per megabit per year,” she said. Other schools not served by the county’s fiber lease 1.5 Mbps T1 lines from a carrier -- and pay nearly $2,000 a megabit yearly -- net of E-rate subsidies, she said.