The fate of the Fox regional sports networks (RSN's) could have a big impact on cable TV operators nationwide.

One thing we do know: in order to smooth regulatory approval of its purchase of Fox, Disney has agreed to sell the 22 RSN's, home to 44 professional teams as well as countless college athletic contests.  According to a report at Bloomberg, possible new owners could include both traditional broadcasting conglomerates such as Sinclair Broadcast Group (likely feeling a bit miffed by Tribune's recent rejection of their merger), a "new media" company such as YouTube (owned by Google) or Amazon, or a buyout firm of investors. Or, you could see some combination of new owners, including the potential for some professional teams to buy back their own RSN and run it themselves. This last option is apparently being explored by the Chicago Cubs when their agreement with NBC Sports Chicago expires.

A final unknown: the impact of carriage availability and costs for cable operators. 

In March, a new organization was launched to help communities that are trying to bring better broadband to their citizens. It's not just about talk, it's about action.

The Community Broadband Action Network (CBAN) was established to provide a collaborative network and marketplace for communities, community-based broadband providers, and solutions providers. CBAN’s goal is to provide pathways for successful action by enabling communities to:

• Explore and Advocate
• Plan and Analyze
• Design and Build
• Launch and Operate
• Leverage and Reinvest

Many communities find themselves with broadband services that are not meeting their citizens' needs. Incumbent providers are too big or profit driven to address concerns over reliability, availability, speed, and other shortcomings. The challenge they face is how to improve broadband, which has become an absolute necessity for community growth and development in the 21st century.

Advocates and community leaders who want to solve this challenge are usually left to their own initiative to determine where to start and, once beginning the process, where to go next. 

CBAN was founded by Curtis Dean, Todd Kielkopf, and Jon Anne Willow to assist these communities by:

• Lowering information barriers
• Increasing the number of partnerships
• Making network construction and operations more viable

CBAN offers free membership to communities and advocates seeking solutions for better broadband in their communities.

Natural allies exist in today's broadband landscape...communities with broadband challenges and existing community-based broadband providers. Although the business models vary - from municipal utilities to independent telecommunications companies, cooperatives, and mutuals - they share the common focus of serving their communities to the best of their abilities.

Community-based providers can benefit from working with the "have not" communities that are striving for solutions. These collaborative efforts can take many forms, including joint ownership, joint operations, wholesale relationships, and others. 

CBAN offers free membership to community-based providers who are interested in partnering or collaborating with communities that are looking for better broadband.

At some point in the process of evaluating their options for better broadband, communities will need services from the experts that provide consulting services, construction, technology, software, and other needed resources. That's where CBAN's Vendor Membership enters the picture.

​Companies who provide these services are always trying to identify where their next opportunity will be coming from.  Not knowing where communities are in their process means that these solutions providers unnecessarily spend time and efforts contacting community leaders who are not in a position to work with them.

CBAN's Vendor Membership allows these companies to become part of an ecosystem that will help grow their business in the municipal market.

​Questions about CBAN? Give me a call or drop an email!
Curtis Dean
CBAN Co-Founder
515-650-0251
curtis@smartsourceconsulting.com

It's been a crazy summer for your humble author of Broadband Bytes.

I'm not complaining, it's a GOOD kind of crazy. Between providing assistance for several municipal broadband projects and helping launch the Community Broadband Action Network, I've been neglecting my Broadband Bytes duties, and for that I apologize. 

However, it's a new month, so its time to get back on the broadband bike and pedal into the future!

The Dubuque City Council continues to talk about possible next steps toward municipal broadband in the northeast Iowa city of 58,000.

Last night the council discussed whether to add broadband to the list of topics to be addressed during their annual planning session in August. A local citizen group, "Campaign for DBQ Municipal Internet" has been working for several months to convince the City to study the issue more closely. They advocate for a feasibility study to consider the costs and benefits of a community-owned fiber optic network that would reach every home and business.

Dubuque has been working for the past several years with private partners to expand fiber connectivity in the city. A network of city-owned conduit has been accessed by private partners to connect in some areas, but has primarily served businesses. The Campaign for DBQ Municipal Internet says better broadband is needed community wide, and says the repeal of net neutrality is a primary driver for their efforts.

To learn more about yesterday's meeting, CLICK HERE to watch TV coverage from KCRG-TV.

Several Iowa communities continue to make progress toward the creation of community-owned fiber broadband networks. Vinton, New Hampton, Charles City, Decorah, Adel, and Pella are all at various stages along the spectrum.

Farthest along in the process are Vinton, New Hampton, and Charles City.  All three have conducted feasibility studies that showed a municipal fiber network was viable, and all three are now headed toward hiring an engineering firm for design engineering and to begin th e process of developing financing options. It is possible that all three communities will break ground on networks in 2019.

Decorah, whose feasbility study was widely panned for its conclusions and analysis, is working to develop a modified financial model and conduct a more detailed measurement of community interest in the project. As you may have heard, a recent effort to municipalize the electric utility in Decorah failed at the ballot by a mere 4 votes, allowing the community to focus its attention on better broadband.

Adair, whose referendum received unanimous approval in March 2017, is continuing efforts to build a fiber network in partnership with Casey Mutual Telephone. Next steps for Adair include development of a business plan and financing options, along with an agreement with Casey Mutual.

Pella's referendum was approved by a resounding 93% of voters last month. Their next steps include market research and development of a business plan.

For operators utilizing one of the variations of the DOCSIS cable modem platform to provide internet service, you'll want to participate in the next training provided by the Iowa Heartland Chapter of the SCTE.

All Things DOCSIS will be led by two expert instructors from Cisco - Benjamin Brodfuehrer and Russ Widener. They will cover all current iterations of DOCSIS being used in the field today, including 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1. 

The training will be held on Wednesday, June 6th and Thursday, June 7th.  The live presentation on Wednesday the 6th will be held at the IAMU Office and Training Complex in Ankeny, with remote sites being hosted by Cedar Falls Utilities and Algona Municipal Utilities for the morning session.  On Thursday the 7th the training will be repeated (morning and afternoon sessions) at Kirkwood Community College in Hiawatha.

Complete details on the training and signup information is available at www.iowaheartlandscte.org/events--training.html

Loras Herrig, the long-time city administrator in Bellevue, Iowa who guided the development of a fiber-to-the-home network, has resigned. ​Herrig's resignation was submitted on May 12th. He had been out of the office for several weeks with health issues and cited health concerns as the primary reason for leaving.

​The newspaper article about Herrig's resignation also referenced some issues between Herrig and some recently elected city council members as another reason for his departure.

CLICK HERE for the article in the Telegraph-Herald.

A new study published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) lists Mediacom as the lowest-rated large provider in terms of both internet service and cable TV.

Overall, the results were not encouraging for any large MSO. Verizon's FIOS came out on top of the ISP rankings, but only with a score of 70 out of 100.  If any municipal ISP's were included in the study, those results were not shown in the report.

Here's the ISP chart. Of particular interest is the fact that Mediacom's ratings fell by 9% despite the launch of gigabit service.

And the pay TV provider rankings

To read more about the report and to access a PDF of the full study, CLICK HERE to read the story at DSL Reports.

With so much hype in the industry about "5G" and "millimeter wave" wireless, it makes you wonder: how would this new technology work? Well, Verizon has just released a video that demonstrates how they are using millimeter wave fixed wireless in a test market, and it's pretty interesting.

Obviously the video was produced by the Verizon marketing department as a way to get people excited about 5G, so take it with a grain of salt. But it's still a pretty interesting explanation about what Verizon has discovered about the properties of millimeter wave wireless in its test environment.

The list of virtual cable operators, or vMVPD's, continues to grow, offering consumers increasing choices for over-the-top viewing. One of the latest that I've been trying out is called TikiLive.

First of all, thanks to Doug Dawson at CCG Consulting, author of the excellent Pots and Pans blog (read it...it's awesome), for the heads-up on TikiLive, which I had never heard of. I've been playing with it for a few days now and here's the bottom line: there's a lot of content (80 or so channels) for not a lot of money (about $30 a month). It's fairly no-frills service, with no cloud DVR or much in the way of on-demand content. But it does have most of the major satellite programming that the average consumer is looking for, including the major ESPN channels. And to provide broadcast network programming, they are carrying the affiliates out of New York City.

If you're interested, here's a video of me demonstrating the service on my living room TV.