A bill promoted by Mediacom that would place potentially fatal restrictions on new and existing municipal broadband providers is likely dead for the 2021 Iowa Legislature.

Senate Study Bill 1184, was identical to a bill introduced in last year's session that also died. It would have eliminated the ability of municipal broadband operators to price their services competitively with incumbents and made access to capital more difficult for new networks. 

The bill was briefly discussed by a subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee on February 16th, but postponed "indefinitely" by the committee. Although it appears dead for this session, CBAN will continue to monitor it and other bills that may have an impact on Iowa's growing municipal broadband community.

Another week...another new CBAN Associate Member to welcome to the ranks of our growing community. We'd like to thank UltraVue Satellite & Security for joining CBAN.

UltraVue Satellite & Security is headquartered in Urbandale, IA.  Founded by Dustin Mick in 2009, UV has a nationwide footprint with their vendors, focusing on DIRECTV/AT&T products for residential, commercial, MDU and Lodging & Institution sales verticals.  In fact, UV is a multi-time winner of several awards for their sales and service in the MDU space and currently manages properties in IA,MN,WI,SD,MO,AZ, FL and NC, totally over 20,000 doors.  UV can provide both DTH (Direct to Home model) or Bulk DIRECTV services to MDUs. Because of this success, Mick is on the prestigious DIRECTV Dealer Advisory Council, helping form policies and programs for all dealers across the country. UV is also one of the largest security system sales and installation companies in Iowa, handling any type of business or residential need, even offering 24/7 monitoring if required.  

Last March, UV added an I&R contract with Century Link that allowed them to hire over 40 techs during the start of the pandemic.  UV is currently ramping up for the this season’s work and is hiring additional techs.  If you are aware of techs that might be interested, please reach out to the UV office at 515-309-6446. 
 
Another key element of UV’s success is their dealer partner network spanning the entire country.  Dealer partners have access to all products that UV offers, with the ability to complete the sale process or refer sales to UV’s call center.  UV prides itself on the accurate reporting, competitive commissions and most importantly, paying their partners on-time and accurately.  UV also offers outstanding sales support, providing training and updates on promotions/pricing as needed with a back office support team, available from 8-8 Mon-Fri and 8-12 on Saturdays, that can help provide quotes, assist with order entry and customer retention.  If your company would like to get more information on UV’s Dealer Partner Program, please reach out to Kurt Whiton, SVP of Sales & Marketing at Kurt.Whiton@teamultravue.com
​

The ranks of CBAN's Associate Members continues to grow! We're excited to welcome Midwest Video Systems to CBAN.

​Midwest Video Solutions (MVS) delivers satellite-video signals on fiber-optic networks.  MVS offers an economical and flexible alternative to cookie-cutter solutions; and you don't have to do it yourself to save money. Their members and prospects include internet service providers (ISPs), independent phone companies and municipalities. Their current membership spans over Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota as well as U.S. Air Force bases in Japan and South Korea.  In turn, their members distribute the IP signal under their own branding, and via a partnership that MVS has established.  MVS also prides itself on not only quality of signal, but they measure and target uptime signal reliability of 99.975%.  Their customers say it this way: “They’re easy to work with. And we appreciate their flexibility.”

​With MVS’s offerings, they provide all of the necessary physical infrastructure, technical expertise, and signal monitoring services - whether from their headend connections or from WIN Technology. This is inclusive of both encrypted MPEG-4 streams to set-top boxes as well as the latest technology of adaptive bit-rate signals, enabling an HLS offering that is serving the growing market of wireless devices. Now you can offer streaming video at home and on every device.  As their customer, you enjoy top-flight savings from a local provider that treats you like the neighbor you are. MVS is member-owned and member­ driven, and they don't forget it. That's why they’re committed to being such good listeners.

Arkansas, which was once among the nation's most restrictive states in terms of municipal broadband networks, has moved a big step in the right direction with legislation signed into law this month.

Senate Bill 74 passed the Arkansas legislature and was signed into law by Governor Asa Hutchinson. While the new law has some limits on municipal networks, it's a huge step in the right direction.

As always, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (a CBAN Advocate member) has done an outstanding job covering the history of municipal broadband in Arkansas. See this post on at muninetworks.org to get the full scoop.

And while you are there, be sure to bookmark their website and refer back to it often. Christopher Mitchell and the team at ILSR do an outstanding job cover municipal broadband across America.

We are so excited to see the CBAN community growing here in early 2021. Our latest Associate Member is eX2.

​eX² Technology is a single source solution for those seeking to build, scale or future proof their communications infrastructure. They provide robust smart city, intelligent transportation, critical infrastructure and private network solutions and services with greater efficiency, loss cost and a streamlined acquisition process. eX² prides themselves on delivering EXCELLENCE IN EXECUTION®, specializing in turnkey network design-build-maintain services, network asset commercialization, duct and dark fiber and assisting their customers with unique project financing options.
 
For more than 25 years, eX² management team members have worked together designing, building, commercializing and maintaining some of the nation’s largest and most complex communications and critical infrastructure projects. Together, they have more than 300 years of combined industry experience, designed and built more than 2M+ fiber miles and accumulated $340M+ in duct and dark fiber sales.

Another great company with a long history of providing services to small, independent broadband companies has joined the ranks of the CBAN Associate Members. We'd like to welcome Innovative Systems to the team!

Innovative Systems is a leading vendor of solutions for North American communications and utility providers with over 800 deployed systems.

eLation™, their integrated BSS/OSS solution, includes

• Billing
• Provisioning
• Mobile apps
• eCommerce
• Financials
• Mapping/Staking

 
MG-TV is Innovative's one-platform approach to video solutions such as

• Middleware
• VOD
• Cloud DVR
• Restart TV
• HLS Live Streaming
• Conditional Access
• Set-top boxes.

 
The APMAX™ platform provides enhanced voice and hosted business solutions.
 
The Innovative Systems Print Division is a full-service printing company specializing in print services for the telecommunications and utilities industries.
 
For more information, visit www.innovsys.com.

Last year, the City of West Des Moines and Google Fiber reached an agreement where the city could build a conduit network and Google Fiber would run fiber and provide services. The announcement attracted a lot of interest in the broadband community, and sparked a lawsuit against West Des Moines by incumbent cable operator Mediacom.

According to a report from Axios, a similar partnership with the City of Des Moines is also in the "early discovery phase". According to the Axios story, Des Moines is also in contact with Metronet, which has announced overbuilds of suburbs Johnston, Urbandale, and Clive. 

No doubt the City of Des Moines will also be looking very carefully at the legal implications of any partnership agreements, especially in light of Mediacom's suit against West Des Moines.

One of the elements of the most recently passed COVID-19 relief bill was an appropriation of $3.2 billion for the "Emergency Broadband Benefit Program". te program will provide a monthly discount of up to $50 per month ($75 per month on tribal lands) for low-income broadband customers. Under the program, eligible broadband providers can opt in to participating in the program, offer the discount to eligible customers, and be reimbursed.

To discuss the program in more detail, the FCC is hosting an online presentation and roundtable discussion on Friday, February 12th at 10:00am EST (9:00am Central, 8am Mountain, 7am Pacific). No registration is required - just visit the FCC's website at https://www.fcc.gov/livewww.fcc.gov/live.

Several months ago your's truly (Curtis Dean) filled out an online form volunteering to be a beta tester for Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet offering. I wasn't expecting much out of it, but I actually received an invitation this week, clicked the link, and went to their website.

As you will note from the small text, Starlink is "targeting coverage in your area in mid to late 2021". I would love to demo Starlink (although not as a replacement for my FTTH service), but I wasn't ready to send Elon $99 quite yet for the honor. 

Starlink recently notified the FCC that they now have 10,000 users connected to their low earth orbit satellite fleet. The company now has over 1,000 satellites in orbit and hope to eventually have a fleet of over 11,000 satellites.

If any of our Broadband Bytes readers have actually had a chance to experience Starlink, drop me a note. cdean@broadbandaction.com.  

Two of Iowa's first municipal telecommunications utilities-and one of its most recent projects-have joined CBAN as Provider Members.

Cedar Falls Utilities began offering broadband services over their hybrid fiber-coaxial network (HFC) in the late 1990's. As customer demand for internet grew, CFU rebuilt their entire community with fiber-to-the-home in the 2010's. And just last year, CFU became one of the first networks in the country to offer 10 Gbps services to any customer that wanted or needed it.

Manning Municipal Utilities has offered telecommunications even longer than Cedar Falls, having built and operated a legacy cable TV system in the 1980's. MMU rebuilt their network to HFC in the early 2000's, and are just completing their rebuild to fiber. 

Waverly Utilities operates a fiber-to-the-home network in their northeast Iowa community. The project was launched in 2016 - 16 years after voters approved a municipal telecommunications referendum. Waverly continues to grow its customer base at a steady pace.

These municipal broadband providers are great role models for any community looking to bring better broadband to their citizens. They show that communities large and small can take control of their future by investing in vital infrastructure. Welcome aboard!