Broadband Prime’s Top 5 – Week 17

The objective of this weekly digest is to bring you an informal top 5 of articles that I read the past week. I will not focus on news, unless ground-breaking rather on opinions, comments and suggestions by individuals or organizations re contemporary issues in the industry. Hopefully, this is going to be a list of good information that you might have missed. I am keeping the number of links strictly to maximum 5 to make the digest meaningful and effective.

Universities Angle for Billions to Build Obama’s New Broadband Network – The article focuses on the role of the academic sector in USA regarding the broadband development in underserved areas. Universities have the know-how and technical expertise to support the public (municipal) broadband aspirations. This discussion is relevant to other countries that are also planning to pour funds in rural broadband development.

Free Markets vs the Public Interest – A commentary by Craig Settles on municipal/public broadband versus private/carriers networks.

Australia’s broadband plan – One of the hottest topics the last couple of weeks is the discussions about Australia’s NBN plan. Scepticism and second thoughts spur discussions re the feasibility of the initiatives and the future actions required to proceed. This is an article outlining some of these concerns.

Structural Bypass – A Simple, Proven Path to ‘Real Broadband’ – This is the transcript of Brough Turner’s presentation at eComm09 about the aspects surrounding an open access physical infrastructure. Excellent reading and in the same direction to the things I blogged about municipal broadband in the last few months.

Tallinn – High Tech Community Masked by the Middle Ages – An inspiring and visionary tale of the ICT infrastructure built in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Tallinn is one of ICF’s Top Seven Intelligent Communities.