Municipal Broadband Untouched. Session is Over. Thank you!

Thanks to you and your participation in the process, lawmakers saw that protecting decades-old monopolies isn’t the slam dunk the cable company had made it out to be. The NC General Assembly wrapped up the year early Sunday morning without taking action on municipal broadband. This year was the biggest battle friends of community broadband had [...]

Dismal speeds from most providers still the norm in the US

Yahoo! News has a good story today about Internet access speeds, and the news is no surprise. In spite of millions of dollars of slick advertising and cartoon characters, we’re still slow in this country. This line sums it up best. “When it comes to Internet performance, in the aggregate, none of us are exactly [...]

Clarifications to News and Observer Article About NC Broadband Bill

The News and Observer published an article this week about the broadband fight in NC. While the reporter did his best to cover a big issue in a relatively small amount of space, some important points were left out. First, you should know two things: Before building our fiber optic network, Wilson asked the cable [...]

Better bandwidth is about much more than cable

Wilson is exempt from S1209, but the bill would make it much more difficult for NC cities or towns to build similar networks in the future. As we watch the bill make its way through the legislature, here are some ways that Wilson’s community owned fiber optic network is helping the people of Wilson right [...]

S1209 exempts Wilson; goes to the full Senate today

The Senate Finance Committee made some pretty big changes to Senate Bill 1209 yesterday. It is being heard in the Senate today. You can listen to the discussion here. Just click on Senate Chamber. Wilson was fully exempt from the bill. That means the 28-million dollar investment our community made three years ago wasn’t made [...]

Study: U.S. now 26th in global broadband speed

The newest information from Ookla shows that the US is still losing ground in the global move to faster broadband speeds. Here’s how the US, who invented the Internet, fares against the top five countries: 1. South Korea – 34.14 Mbps (megabits per second) 2. Latvia – 24.29 Mbps 3. Moldova – 21.37 Mbps 4. [...]

Winston Salem Journal: Telecoms can’t expect people to keep waiting

The Winston Salem Journal did an excellent job covering the municipal broadband issue this week. The writers understood that the people of NC shouldn’t have to wait around for cable and telecom companies to improve their systems. US broadband speeds simply haven’t kept up with many countries because the copper cable and telephone wires are [...]

WBTV Charlotte nails it with fiber optics story

WBTV, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte did a really effective job this week explaining why fiber optics is better than the old fashioned cable lines. They covered our friends in Salisbury, NC, just a few hours from here, who are planning to launch their own fiber optic network later this summer. They will join Wilson [...]

Greeenlight to serve Wilson Public School campuses, offices

This photo is pretty cool for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a concrete indicator that Greenlight will help students, teachers and administrators in Wilson County’s public schools access true broadband. They can use it for testing, distance learning and all sorts of applications. It’s great for a second reason, too. While the schools are [...]

Lawmaker: We should promote other models, including the municipal

The Associated Press covered the NC broadband debate this weekend, and the News and Observer picked it up. It mentioned that another committee is already studying this topic and quoted the chair of it: “Leaving this solely to the telecoms and the cable companies has not gotten us the best result we could get, and [...]