Last week we invited you to save the date for a two-hour livestream event Building for Digital Equity: Demystifying Broadband Policy and Funding that the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is co-organizing with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).

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We told you this event – which will be held on Wednesday, March 16th, from 2-4pm ET – was not going to be your average conference or webinar with 45-minute panels that make your derriere doze off or your eyes glaze over like a stale donut.

We are aiming for a fast-paced, fun, and interactive virtual gathering of network builders, local stakeholders, policy advocates, and funding experts from across the country that will feature a mix of short presentations, a sprinkling of trivia and prizes, and panels with Q & A’s that will be accessible on a variety of popular social media platforms.

Well, the event is coming together, promising to offer practical insights on how communities can seize this unprecedented moment to pursue community-driven broadband solutions.

You can register for the event here.

Here’s a sneak peek at the line-up:

We're living through a time with an unprecedented level of broadband infrastructure funding, fueled not only by the American Rescue Plan, but the Consolidated Appropriations Act, the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Hundreds of community-driven projects are already underway, but finding solid footing amidst these programs, statutes, and evolving rules is difficult. 

To help, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is teaming up with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance for a two-hour livestream event to demystify the landscape. On Wednesday, March 16th, from 2-4pm ET, we're hosting an online conversation to bring together local stakeholders, policy advocates, and funding experts in one place. We're calling it Building for Digital Equity: Demystifying Broadband Policy and Funding.

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But this isn't your average conference or webinar, with 45-minute panels that make your butt go numb and your eyes glaze over. Oh no. We're aiming for a fast-paced, fun, and most importantly interactive conversation between policy advocates, network builders, local officials, and anyone else interested in learning how we can ensure that the tens of billions in upcoming infrastructure funding goes to solving the connectivity crisis permanently rather than once again disappearing into the pockets of the monopoly Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Throughout the pandemic, the Insure the Uninsured Project (ITUP), a California-based nonprofit health policy institute, heard from community health care organizations across the state about a persistent problem: the digital divide was, and is, a major barrier to accessing telehealth services.

To help tackle that challenge, ITUP, in collaboration with Connect Humanity and the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks Initiative, is offering concerned Californians nuggets of wisdom on how to bridge that divide during a virtual policy forum next month.

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The single-day two-hour forum – “Partnering for Success: Leveraging Telehealth as a Use Case for Community Broadband and Connectivity” – will explore ways California communities can partner with philanthropists to enhance high-speed Internet connectivity and telehealth services in the Golden State.

The forum will be held on November 17 from 9am to 11am PST and will feature a variety of policy experts and community broadband advocates, including our own Christopher Mitchell who will give the opening presentation.

That will be followed by an expert panel who will share what is being done elsewhere and how better broadband access can help augment health and telehealth services. The final part of the forum will cover a pilot project and potential partnerships to improve connectivity, health care delivery, and health care costs.

Join us live on Monday, October 25th at 5pm ET for Episode 23 of the Connect This! Show, where co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by Neil Mylet and Deb Simpier (Althea Networks) to talk about grassroots networking. They'll dive into into the hardware and software considerations made in building hyperlocal networks, and bringing together people passionate about returning knowledge and control to build more resilient communities.

Subscribe to the show using this feed, or visit ConnectThisShow.com

Email us broadband@muninetworks.org with feedback, ideas for the show, or your pictures of weird wireless infrastructure to stump Travis.

Watch here or below on YouTube Live, or via Facebook Live here.

Join us live this Thursday, October 14th at 5pm ET for Episode 22 of the Connect This! Show, where co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by Dennis Pappas (Longmont, Colorado) and Christy Batts (Clarksville, Tennessee) to talk about large municipalities successfully deploying broadband infrastructure for an array of community benefits. 

Longmont, Colorado's Nextlight has been wildly successful during its first five years of life in uncommon ways. Clarksville, Tennessee's CDE Lightband has overcome early challenges to bring significant savings to the public, especially to members of the municipal electric utility. Christopher, Travis, Dennis, and Christy come together to unpack how they got there and what it means for the future.

Subscribe to the show using this feed, or visit ConnectThisShow.com

Email us broadband@muninetworks.org with feedback, ideas for the show, or your pictures of weird wireless infrastructure to stump Travis.

Watch here or below on YouTube Live, or via Facebook Live here.

This week, don't miss a very special episode of the Connect This! Show, streaming live from the Minneapolis headquarters of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance for the very first time! 

Co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be broadcasting with most of the Community Broadband Networks initiative team watching from the peanut gallery. They will be joined virtually by Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting) and Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) to dive into the nitty gritty of broadband infrastructure and talk about permitting, rights of way (ROW), and all the day-to-day minutae of turning a network design into physical reality. 

They'll talk about building good relationships with local government, planning ahead, overcoming unanticipated challenges, and finding creative solutions to permitting and right of way issues. We'll see some entities that have done it well, and others that have done it poorly. 

Subscribe to the show using this feed, or visit ConnectThisShow.com

Email us broadband@muninetworks.org with feedback, ideas for the show, or your pictures of weird wireless infrastructure to stump Travis.

Watch here or below on YouTube Live, or via Facebook Live here.

Need better Internet access in your community but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re in the middle of a community broadband project but have hit a roadblock?

Be one of 100 broadband champions attending the Michigan Moonshot Broadband Summit at the one-day event on Tuesday, November 9th in Traverse City, Michigan. 

The Michigan Moonshot Summit is a day-long conference focused on helping representatives of local governments, community anchor institutions, and economic development groups navigate the hurdles involved when pursuing a regional or community broadband project. The event will include workshopping opportunities where attendees can collaborate with industry thought leaders to address impending issues and identify solutions.

Merit, a statewide educational and research network run by Michigan’s public university system, is hosting the event. Michigan Moonshot is Merit’s effort to improve Internet access in the state by collecting accurate data, disseminating educational resources, influencing policy decisions, and connecting communities to funding.

“From determining ownership models and drafting network designs, to navigating the grant landscape, developing public-private partnerships, and deploying mapping initiatives, this year’s focus is singular — ACTION,” reads the Moonshot Summit website.

To attend this year’s event, “attendees must be a Merit Member and/or Broadband champions who are part of regional planning, building, and running efforts; economic development groups and local governments; or, institutions, community anchors and municipalities addressing the ‘digital divide.’”

Breakout Sessions and Speakers

The first breakout session of the Moonshot Summit will assist municipalities in “Navigating the METRO Act.” 

Registration is now open for the 5th annual Indigenous Connectivity Summit (ICS), which will be held virtually by The Internet Society this October 12-15.

The three-day virtual conference will be packed with presentations and community-led discussions from experts who’ve worked on tribal community networks. Their conversations will cover a range of topics to assist Indigenous leaders interested in pursuing connectivity solutions, including funding sources, advocacy, digital tools, and a range of other matters.

From the announcement: 

Each year the ICS community comes together to discuss ways to ensure Alaska Native, American Indian, Inuit, Native Hawaiian, First Nations and Métis communities have affordable, high-quality and sustainable Internet access, and talk about how connectivity supports social and economic development. The Summit provides practical, hands-on training to help Indigenous communities connect to the Internet and creates opportunities to build relationships and share useful knowledge and experience.

Native American Tribal Governments have been instrumental in recent years in bringing better connectivity to tribal lands. Many large incumbent providers won’t serve tribal lands because, as with other rural areas, they don’t consider the investment profitable. As a result, these communities have exercised their own resourcefulness and invested in themselves through a range of creative solutions.

Register for the three-day virtual event here. 

Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that "copyright, telecommunications, and Internet law" evolve and continue to be regulated in pursuit of what is best for the public at large, will be holding its 18th annual Intellectual Property, Information Policy, and Internet Protocol (IP3) awards virtually this September 23rd, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Register here.

Entering it's 20th anniversary this year, Public Knowledge has and continues to do pioneering, nuanced, and impactful work in pursuit of towards healthier markets, broadband access, media consolidation, net neutrality, spectrum reform, consumer privacy, and an array of other issues. The organization's Senior Policy Counsel John Bergmeyer joined the Community Broadband Bits podcast in 2017 to talk about cable monopolies, content providers, and market competition.

Three individuals will be presented awards for their work by Joy Boulamwini of the Algorithmic Justice League:

Our Intellectual Property Award will be posthumously presented to Sherwin Siy. He was a tech policy activist whose expertise spanned a range of fields including copyright, privacy, telecommunications, and free expression.

Our Internet Protocol Award will be presented to Chris Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis.

And our President's Award will be presented to Senator Amy Klobuchar — one of the Senate’s foremost leaders on tech issues like platform regulation and broadband opportunity.

Register for the event here to join the event and support the ongoing work by Public Knowledge.

With an estimated 22 percent of Americans in rural areas and 28 percent of indigenous Americans on Tribal lands living without access to broadband that meets the federal minimum definition of 25/3 Mbps, the Wireless Communication Alliance is bringing together a panel of experts to explore how broadband deployment will transform rural America and Native Nations in the years ahead.

On Tuesday July 27, the Wireless Communication Alliance will host the virtual event – Broadband in Underserved Rural Areas 2021. It will feature a panel discussion and Q & A session, which is open to the public, that will cover present challenges, the various technologies being deployed, and the promise of what high-speed Internet connectivity can deliver.

Our own Chris Mitchell will be one of four feature panelists. The other panelists are: Richard Bernhardt, National Spectrum Adviser with the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA); Samantha Schartman-Cycyk, Executive Director of the Marconi Society; and Chris Frost, Director of Technology and Infrastructure at Cruzio.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Mohammad (Mo) Shakouri, Chairman of the WiMAX Forum, Director of the Community Broadband Initiative at Joint Venture Silicon Valley, and Founder and CEO of Microsanj.

Participants must register in advance of the event and will then be sent a confirmation email along with a Zoom invite. As an added bonus, the Wireless Communication Alliance will raffle off a Steampunk Retro Rocket Lamp.  

The hour-and-a-half long event will start at 1 p.m. PST on July 27.