This year’s Broadband Communities Summit, a leading event for community leaders, property owners, network infrastructure builders and telco services providers, focused on Delivering Connectivity for Communities, a mission that we are passionate about at CVFiber. The 3-day event brought communications leaders to Texas from across the United States with a jam-packed agenda. The Summit highlighted 5 key themes to help attendees tackle bringing greater connectivity to their communities including:  

  • Big-picture keynotes with speakers sharing their vision for the future, discussing how digital and broadband innovation impacts employment trends and the greater economy,  
  • Strategy with explorations in investment, regulatory and policy context,  
  • Technology and operations with the latest development to offer the very best services while improving network deployments,  
  • Community development with renewed ways to bridge the digital divide, and  
  • Multifamily property digitization of assets to find new ways to overcome technical, operational, legal and commercial obstacles.  

Our very own Jennille Smith, CVFiber’s Executive Director, co-paneled a well-received pre-conference session focusing on Public Networks. The session was dedicated to bringing practitioners from startups to successful models including open access, publicly-owned utilities, and districts formed just to bring broadband to multiple communities. Alongside Jennille, the panel organized by The American Association of Public Broadband, featured:  

  • Moderator: Kim McKinley, CMO, UTOPIA Fiber 
  • Doug Maglothin, CEO, Diamond State Networks 
  • Scott Menhart, Chief Technology & Information Officer, Traverse City Light & Power 
  • Justin Roller, President, Bonfire Fiber. 

The dynamic panel shared their expertise with attendees to help anyone thinking about or is moving towards building a community-owned network. They brought their learnings to help broadband professionals understand what is needed and how to get started.  

The Summit also featured a wealth of knowledge with key trends, jumping off points with new ideas, and a collection of new contacts to continue to bring greater connectivity to our communities.

So, what’s the latest buzz in the world of connectivity? Here are a couple of themes that we noticed during our time at the Summit:  

  • Wireless that sees through leaves: Fixed wireless solutions are becoming more sophisticated at canceling interference which could be a game changer in treed areas such as Vermont and could provide solutions that supplement broadband. Here is an example of cutting-edge technology: https://www.taranawireless.com/product
  • Open access in some places: Most public entities are trending towards open access. This allows more sharing of resources and opens public private partnership (PPP or “triple P”) opportunities. This allows the public entity to own the conduit or highway system of the messenger fiber while allowing competitors to use the space. This could be seen as diluting local control but could also be seen as healthy competition and a strategic method of bringing high-speed Internet to every address in a more cost-effective manner. 
  • The importance of grant expertise: More companies are specializing in broadband grants, various forms of private funding, and a spectrum of bond structures. It is smart to continually revisit the opportunities and to work with those with growing industry knowledge at the outset of the project. However, growth requires to constantly reassess within this category.
  • New offering services: For Internet Service Providers (ISPs), offering services of connected homes as an add-on is in the future. It’s not just the speed or price that customers are expecting. It will be the growing selection of offerings to help catch the eye of homes and businesses throughout our region.  
  • Consolidation: This is trending hugely among all people in broadband, not just among ISPs but also for vendors. 
  • Rapid industry evolution: Since the industry is changing so rapidly, annual planning is recommended at most. 

We look forward to keeping a close eye on the broadband industry as we continue to connect homes and businesses throughout our Central Vermont member towns.