Chattanooga's municipal utility company EPB Fiber Optics now offers 10 Gbps Internet service for every home in the 600-square-mile area, said a Thursday news release from EPB. Residential service costs $299 per month.
About 98 percent of the roughly 17,000 U.S. public libraries have free public Wi-Fi access, a survey from the American Library Association found. ALA said that a large portion of those libraries also offer programs to help people find training to understand technology better. Seventy-seven percent of libraries offer online health resources. About 90 percent of libraries also have basic digital literacy training, 62 percent support new technology training, 57 percent have information about safe online practices and 56 percent have training on social media use, the survey found. It was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and managed by the ALA Office for Research & Statistics and the Information Policy and Access Center at the University of Maryland. The study provides national and state-level data. The survey used the FY 2012 Public Library Survey file released in June 2014 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services as its sample frame. The study included 5,195 libraries in its sample and received 2,304 responses, for a 44 percent response rate. Weighted analysis was used to present national estimates.
Setting up "e-government" services could save state governments as much as $11 billion over the next five years, said a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF said that the cost-saving measures would employ fewer workers and be run internally with services accessible to employees from anywhere and residents wouldn't have to speak to government officials in person, which would cut down on waiting lines. The federal government can help states improve their productivity by creating incentives for states to improve their use of IT, said ITIF Tuesday.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced Tuesday a new TV ad slamming Verizon for not building out enough FiOS in New York City, a news release from the union said. The commercial's release comes a day before the city council holds a hearing about the issue. The ad centers on New York City's audit of the FiOS rollout that says Verizon failed to meet its promise to deliver the service to everyone in the city who wanted it, the release said. Verizon has deployed fiber in every city neighborhood, a company spokesman said Tuesday. "The Union’s true goal behind this ad campaign is to try and force the company to hire more employees, which will increase membership and revenues for the Union," he said. "It’s the wrong approach. Rather than attacking the company that offers excellent jobs to more than 37,000 CWA members, the union would be far better off trying to work with us on a new contract that’s fair to our employees, our customers and would help position the company for success in the future.”
September proposals to increase restrictions on room-sharing websites in the District of Columbia, such as that of Airbnb, seem to be initiated by the hotel industry to restrict competition, said a blog post on the Free State Foundation's website Thursday. One of the proposals has been supported by Unite Here Local 25, a union that represents 6,500 hotel employees in the Washington area, and the other was drafted by a coalition of large hotels located in the Washington area, the post said. The district of Columbia government requires individuals who share spaces for fewer than 30 days to get a business license, but both of the draft ordinances would limit what a license holder can do with property, the post said. Both proposals go beyond simple standards, instead creating costs that ultimately will restrict competition from room-sharing applications and benefit the hotel industry and its workers, the post said.
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the California Electronic Privacy Communications Act (CalECPA SB-178) into law Thursday. The bill “protects Californians against warrantless law enforcement access to private electronic communications such as emails, text messages and GPS data that are stored in the cloud and on smart phones, tablets, laptops and other digital devices,” said one of the bill’s author’s, state Sen. Mark Leno (D), in a news release. CalECPA has support from Silicon Valley’s major tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have “seen a dramatic rise in requests from law enforcement for consumer data in recent years,” the release said. “Google has seen a 180 percent jump in law enforcement demands for consumer data in the past five years,” it said. “Last year, AT&T received 64,000 demands -- a 70 percent increase in a single year,” it said. “Verizon reports that only one-third of its requests had a warrant, and last year Twitter and Tumblr received more demands from California than any other state,” the release said. American Civil Liberties Union Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director Nicole Ozer called Brown’s decision to sign the legislation into law a “landmark win for digital privacy,” in an ACLU news release. California now joins Maine, Texas, Utah and Virginia in updating privacy laws for the digital age, Leno's news release said. The ACLU hopes California’s legislation is used as a “model for the rest of the nation in protecting our digital privacy rights,” Ozer said. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology also released statements supporting Brown’s decision to sign the legislation.
The New Jersey Rate Counsel again asked the state Board of Public Utilities to open an investigation into Verizon's transition from copper to fiber, in reply to Verizon's response to the rate counsel's initial request for an investigation in docket TO15060749. The counsel disagrees that Verizon is offering better services on its fiber network than on the copper one, and the Oct. 8 comments said the board should review the way the company is doing its transition. It also said customers are receiving reduced service at an increased cost because during prolonged power outages those with fiber have to have backup batteries in order to keep the service functioning. The counsel also questioned the reliability claims Verizon makes about its fiber network, saying there have been a lot of consumer complaints about disconnected calls and clicking and echoing during calls, and said that an investigation should be held to find out if that is an isolated problem or a general one.
Great Plains Communications is expanding its network in Nebraska and Des Moines, a news release from the company said Thursday. Great Plains owns the largest fiber network in Nebraska, it said. The Des Moines route will offer up to 100 Gbps, the release said. The network will extend from the Nebraska market into the Des Moines carrier hotel, connecting with regional and national carriers, it said.
The East Central Vermont Community Fiber-Optic Network (ECFiber) added fiber-to-the-home routes in September, it said in a news release. The network is available in parts of the towns of Randolph and Norwich, and the projects were partially funded by grants from the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (VTA), together with investments by local residents, it said Tuesday. The Vermont Public Service Department is building open-access fiber cable trunks designed by the VTA through parts of Randolph and other communities. ECFiber is a community network comprised of 24 towns in east-central Vermont that banded together to build a community-owned network.
NTIA plans a daylong regional broadband workshop in California to help communities expand their broadband capacity and utilization, it said in a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. The workshop will be Nov. 17 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, NTIA said.