This report provides a detailed account of the development of LeverettNet, Leverett, Massachusetts' municipal fiber optic network. (Exhibit A is a list of interviewees.) It includes information about the extensive planning and outreach activities carried out by Leverett from 2011 through 2013,...

This report describes a multi-year effort by the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to establish a robust and versatile communications infrastructure to better serve its citizens. The town's municipal utility, Concord Municipal Light Plant, or CMLP, built a 100-mile fiber optic network as a...

In this article, I evaluate the multi-billion-dollar 700 MHz auction regime established by the FCC in 2007-08 as a case study in the institutional role of the Commission. The Commission's solicitude for the interests of large traditional communications players is still as firmly in place as it...

This report provides detailed accounts of planning carried out in connection with community fiber networks in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, CA, and Seattle, WA. It includes information about existing fiber assets that the cities identified, funding mechanisms that were considered, and...

This essay suggests that how "the internet" is understood has substantial legal, social, and cultural consequences. Beginning in the 1940s, Netheads adopted an understanding of man-computer symbiosis that continues to be attractive to internet futurists. Later on, in the 1970s, Engineers...

The internet offers the potential for economic growth stemming from online human communications, but recent industry and government actions have disfavored these possibilities by treating the internet like a content-delivery supply chain. I recommend that the internet be at the center of...

The Federal Communications Commission moved swiftly in 2005 to impose E911 and CALEA requirements - two "social policies" that had been applied to telephone companies - on broadband internet access providers and online applications. E911, broadly speaking, requires telephone companies to provide...