ILSR is pleased to congratulate Chattanooga, Tennessee, for building the largest publicly owned, full fiber network in the United States.  Chattanooga’s public power utility, EPB, began offering telephone, broadband, and television services on its network on September 15.

This broadband network will allow smart-grid applications for the electrical utility as well as offer local support, faster speeds for both uploading and downloading.

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The Chair of the Federal Communications Commission has taken a stand for network neutrality – the founding principle of openness of the Internet. In short, network neutrality means the entity providing you access to the Internet cannot interfere with the sites you choose to visit – it cannot speed them up or slow them down in order to increase their profits.  

Because most Americans get access to the Internet from large, absentee-owned profit-maximizing companies who are often de facto monopolies, we have to beware the gulf between community interests and the narrow interests of these companies. 

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As the Federal Communications Commission creates a National Broadband Plan for the United States, it will have to decide whether to revise its definition of broadband.  On one side, ILSR and others demand a robust definition to encourage greater network infrastructure investment.  On the other, telecommunications companies want to keep the existing definition so they can claim they serve nearly everyone. 

In all the wrangling over how we should define broadband, I wanted to step back and remember why the definition itself is so important. 

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