Category: Connections Blog

CLIC warmly welcomes Jane Smith Patterson, President of the View Forward - Go Forward, to our Board of Advisors. Jane is nationally renowned for serving as the Executive Director of the e-NC Authority and establishing the vanguard, decades-long, effort in North Carolina to improve broadband access for rural areas, not only to improve technology, its application, and enhance the economy of N…

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CLIC is pleased to report that the proposed new state barriers to community broadband in Missouri – HB 437/SB266 – did not pass this year. CLIC and several other national organizations and high-tech companies had joined together to oppose these bills and had advised the Missouri legislature that these bills were bad for Missouri’s communities, bad for the private sector, particularly the hig…

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On March 23, 2015, the White House released a Presidential Memorandum establishing a new Broadband Opportunity Council, co-chaired by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Agriculture. The Council comprises 25 federal agencies that can play a role in accelerating broadband deployment and promoting the technology’s adoption across the country. On April 29, 2015, as part of the Council’s objec…

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Pundits often look to the Big Stuff, the large-scale stories, to explain why access to modern fiber broadband infrastructure is so important to the quality of our lives. But we should not overlook the overall combined impact of “the little stuff” where this fiber infrastructure really makes a difference. Little stuff, like the impact of facilitated telemedicine on young parents and the rea…

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John M. Eger, in an insightful blog last month, talked about CLIC’s role in elevating the debate about broadband to a debate about America’s future. What consumers and citizens across our country need to understand, he said, is that “local internet choice is really about reinventing our cities for the new, increasingly, global knowledge economy.” John was kind enough to go into the deta…

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CLIC mourns the loss of Charles Benton, our dear friend and member of our Board of Advisors. Charles, the founder and Chairman of the Benton Foundation, died last week after an extraordinary life of accomplishment, philanthropy, and advocacy for the public interest in communications. Most recently, in the past decade, Charles has been one of the foremost champions of local Internet choice, …

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CLIC is thrilled to be hosting a pre-conference event before the Broadband Communities Conference on April 13,  2015, in Austin, Texas at the Renaissance Hotel.  We are excited to bring together our diverse membership and discuss why local decision-making is critical to our broadband future.  Over the course of the day, we’ll hear from elected officials who have fought for local choice in the…

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Chris Mitchell from the Institute of Local Self Reliance recently interviewed Jim Baller, counsel to both Chattanooga EPB and Wilson, NC on their now successful petitions at the FCC. We encourage our readers to listen to the full half-hour interview here, and bring you just a few of the highlights below (slightly edited): Chris: How did it go? We just had this great vote at the FCC and we�…

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According to FCC Chairman Wheeler, 15 million Americans, primarily in rural communities, cannot access entry level broadband from home, and 41% of the nation’s rural schools lack a high speed connection. Most rural areas have no choice but to settle for the slow lane -- internet on old, poorly maintained, twisted pair copper lines. So it was good news this week that in Tennessee, the stat…

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CLIC has received permission to post a terrific letter recently written to Wilson’s Mayor Bruce Rose from Mayor Joey Durel of Lafayette, underscoring how municipal deployment of fiber internet is not a partisan issue, it is an infrastructure issue. Local communities need to be able to decide for themselves the best means possible for ensuring that no one in their communities go without acces…

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