Unbuffered

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Claudia Tarbell, Senior Engagement Manager for Tribal, Indigenous and First Nation Communities and Michael Weening, President and CEO, both from Calix. Claudia shares what it was like to transition from working at Mohawk Networks to becoming a part of Calix' community engagement team, and how she talks with Tribes about what it means to have owner...

 This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Alyssa Clemsen Roberts, President and CEO of New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC). Two and a half years ago, there were no plans to add broadband to its portfolio. Two membership votes and a new CEO later, and NHEC is building 25 miles of new fiber a week across its footprint, and planning to finish a $50-million grant-funded project in the...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Kristan Johnson, Telephone Operations Manager of the Tohono O'odham Utility Authority (TOUA), which provides telephone, electric, water, gas, and Internet service to a large portion of those living throughout the Tohono O'odham Nation in south-central Arizona. Currently, the utility authority serves 4,000 telephone and broadband subscribers. Krist...

This week on the show, Christopher is joined by Senior Researcher Ry Marcattilio for a conversation about on-the-ground work in a rural county in Minnesota. After joining a listening session with local elected officials, the district representative, and the broadband action team, Christopher and Ry hop in the studio to reflect on what they heard. From grant requests that have gotten short-circuite...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Evan Marwell (CEO) and Jenny Miller (Director of Government Affairs), from the nonprofit Education Superhighway . Begun as an organization aimed at improving Internet access for schools, today Education Superhighway focuses its efforts on leveraging data and on-the-ground work to bring solutions for the more than 18 million households with basic b...

 This week on the show, Christopher is joined by Stacy Evans, Chief Broadband and Technology Officer at BrightRidge, the municipal network for Johnson City, Tennessee. They talk an accelerating build timeline, returning millions to local government, keeping electric prices low, and working with nearby communities to build a more resilient eastern Tennessee that serves as a hotbed for new investmen...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Joan Engebretson, Managing Editor at Telecompetitor. They chat about writing for different kinds of audiences, separating hype from fact, and what the confusion that reigned over the mapping challenge process this past winter. ★ Support this podcast ★

This week on the podcast and on the most Valentines-iest of days, Christopher is joined by Katie Espeseth, Vice President of New Products EPB Fiber , at the municipal network in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After catching up on the release of the network’s 25 gigabit service and the latest progress of the HCS EdConnect initiative (which has connected almost 10,000 homes), Katie shares with Christopher...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by General Manager Brad Nosler and Senior Customer Support specialist Elizabeth Pereira, both from the city of Hillsboro, Oregon. The city’s municipal broadband network, HiLight, is new, having begun signing up subscribers in the spring of 2021. Notably, HiLight  began building in the areas highest-need neighborhoods , where connectivity rates were d...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by ILSR Communications Team Lead Sean Gonsalves to talk about the most recent  Tribal Broadband Bootcamp , in Gila River. Tribal attendees from across North America came together – some experienced, and others tackling structural broadband inequities in their regions for the first time – came together to meet each other, share lessons learned, and ge...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Rudolf van der Berg, Partner at Stratix Consulting, a Dutch consulting firm that does work in telecommunications and has been deeply involved in the historic level of new infrastructure deployment projects in northern Europe. Rudolf breaks down what’s going on today in Europe’s broadband landscape, including efforts to reach the unserved, new entr...

This week on the show, the staff get together to bend their collective imaginations to what we expect to see as the biggest news stories of 2023. Returning to join Christopher are Sean Gonsalves, Christine Parker, Emma Gautier, and Ry Marcattilio to discuss the BEAD funding rollout, mapping, the current state of preemption laws, Starry, the FCC, and more.  Who will be right? Wrong? We’ll have to w...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by returning guest Blair Levin. Levin has served as former chief of staff to FCC Chair Reed Hundt as well as executive director of the National Broadband Plan (2009-2010). Nowadays, he’s a  nonresident senior fellow at Brookings , and joins Christopher to unpack all that we might expect to see at play over the coming year. The show covers a lot of gr...

This week on the podcast, Christopher Mitchell join’s Drew Clark on Broadband. Money’s Ask Me Anything series, and in true fashion, he never ducks the hard questions. With audience questions, Drew and Christopher cover wide ground, including why the national broadband marketplace needs publicly owned infrastructure options, the benefits of open access models, how cities can prepare for BEAD and ot...

It’s December, which means it’s time to pull the staff together and get a handle on what happened in the broadband landscape in 2022. Joining Christopher is GIS and Data Visualization Specialist Christine Parker, Associate Researcher Emma Gautier, Outreach Team Lead DeAnne Cuellar, Senior Reporter and Communications Team Lead Sean Gonsalves, and Senior Researcher and Research Team Lead Ry Marcatti...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Senior Reporter, Editor and Communications Team Lead Sean Gonsalves and GIS and Data Visualization Specialist Christine Parker to talk about how bad data can blind us and good data can drive positive policy solutions. First, they talk about  a new guide developed by ILSR  to help citizen-advocates, nonprofits, and state and local elected officials...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by  Tamarah Holmes , Director at the Office of Broadband at  Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development . Virginia is ahead of the game compared to a lot of the states in terms of its planning and proactive work with providers to achieve universal access in historically unserved and underserved areas. Tamarah talks with Christopher abou...

This week on the podcast, ILSR Senior Reporter and Editor Sean Gonsalves joins the show for another installment of Crazy Talk. Today’s topic is fiber, with the two breaking down a recent op-ed in The Hill by Technology Policy Institute President Scott Wallsten. Christopher and Sean inject a much-needed reality check, as well as some nuance, to Wallsten’s performative anxiety … Continue reading "Cr...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Dustin Loup, Project Manager of the National Broadband Mapping Coalition, housed at the Marconi Society. Dustin joins us to talk about the new national Federal Communications Commission broadband maps, currently under construction and intended to replace the current and hopelessly broken one to prepare for tens of billion … Continue reading "Maps,...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Harold Feld, Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge. Feld is a staple of the field, and has been a consistent voice not only for consumers but broadband advocates of all types for more than two decades.  The show takes on a reflective nature, as they talk about theories … Continue reading "Hope and Change – Episode 527 of the Community Broadban...

In this episode of the podcast, Christopher is joined by William Sullivan, a resident of the city of Baltimore who works as part of the Digital Equity Leadership Lab. He shares his work in the city in recent years in getting students engaged in building digital skills and computer literacy. By pairing gaming with learning programs, Sullivan … Continue reading "Teaching Through Gaming in Baltimore...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Aaron Meyerson, former Deputy CTO for the city of New York. Christopher and Aaron dig into New York City’s Internet Master Plan, which launched in the spring of 2021 and gained steam before being put on hold by the Adam’s administration in January of 2022.  Aaron shares … Continue reading "Learning from New York City’s Master Internet Plan – Episo...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Ben Matranga, co-founder and managing partner of Connectivity Capital, and Jane Coffin, chief community officer at Connect Humanity. The conversation this week takes on a bit of international flavor as the three of them discuss a recent report “Financing Mechanisms for Locally Owned Internet Infrastructure,” authored collaboratively by … Continue...

This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Shayna Englin, Director of the Digital Equity Initiative at the California Community Foundation (CCF) to talk about a new report by CCF and its partners that reveals the systematic broadband cost inequities perpetuated in LA County by Charter Spectrum, the region’s monopoly provider. “Sounding the Alarm,” a pricing and policy impact study, shows n...