Earlier this year, West Virginia faced hard scrutiny from federal officials over its broadband plan. The state applied for federal broadband funding to expand a statewide network through anchor institutions such as hospitals and schools but had to revise the plan after learning that many of the institutions originally included in the application already had broadband. Local officials then submitted a revised plan to bring sites without broadband online and get the project back on track which was approved. Since then, critics of the project have been poised waiting for any missteps.

When Frontier’s work is complete over 400 schools will have broadband although state officials have raised concerns about some of the equipment including routers which cost north of $20,000 each.

Frontier is only responsible for laying fiber lines but questions about costs raised during the meeting show that some state officials remain unconvinced that the project is going well. West Virginia was given $126 million in federal stimulus dollars to build the network.

Last year, Chillicothe, Ohio was given an early innovation grant from the federal government for its broadband expansion plan. Since then, Governor Kasich has made statewide broadband expansion a central priority of his administration, by launching the 100gbps expansion plan.

At an event in February, the Governor highlighted his plan to create a state of the art medical education and health care corridor over the network. Touting the network’s potential benefits including job creation, economic development and improved educational opportunities for Ohioans. Yesterday, the cities of Portsmouth and Wooster announced that they now will join Akron, Athens and Youngstown as hubs for Phase II development of the broadband network. The two cities are agricultural hubs and will add that economic sector to the network mix.

“This is the new gold standard for technology and information sharing, and we want to ensure that the entire state benefits from its potential,” Governor Kasich said.

The Ohio Controlling Board approved today the $3.1 million state investment in this latest broadband enhancement. Additionally, the state will offer assistance to 33 of Ohio’s four-year public and private and two-year community and technical institutions to contract with vendors to upgrade their last-mile connections to the network backbone. Phase I of the development will connect Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo by September 2012. Phase II will be complete by the end of the year.

The 100 Gbps network will connect OARnet to Internet2 through connection points at the northern and southern ends of the state. Internet2, a nationwide advanced networking consortium, spans U.S. and international institutions that are leaders in the worlds of research, academia, industry and government.

According to the report, wireline broadband providers invested nearly $27 billion last year. From 1996 through 2011, wireline broadband providers invested approximately $640 billion in broadband infrastructure.

High-speed fixed access and fiber core networks are essential to carry the large volume of data traffic, which has grown from the equivalent of 8.3 million DVDs per month in 2000 to more than 1.4 billion DVDs per month in 2010, and is expected to triple again over the next five years.

At the state and local level, some firms such as Calix, a US-based middle-mile provider, have been gaining ground as states work through several broadband projects with funding from the BTOP program. The BTOP program provides federal funding support for states and municipalities seeking to expand localized access to high speed broadband through anchor institutions such as hospitals, schools, libraries and public safety institutions.  The funding is provided through federal stimulus funds.

The research brief says that the capital investment shows that “the broadband industry remains committed to deploying more and better broadband across the country.” However, these claims are questionable as bills have been put forward in several states by the same companies that comprise USTelecom, to stop municipal broadband networks in areas where the private sector has been open about having no plans to build out this much needed infrastructure.

On Monday, Public Knowledge a group that works to maintain the openness of the internet sent letters to to the heads of the largest landline and wireless companies asking about another access limiting issue – the implementation of data caps which curb the amount of data consumers can use on the network without extra charges.

Letters were sent to the heads of wireless companies AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint, and to landline companies Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Cable.

The letters followed two other actions designed to bring to light the creation of artificial scarcity of bandwidth by private providers through the use of data caps on consumers.  The Group released a new white paper on Monday, which highlights several concerns and recommendations for how to handle data capping.

Consumers are typically unaware that their data use has been capped, and many times providers do not notify an individual that their use is being restricted. When consumers are aware of the practice it is usually through usage based billing which charges consumers based on what they use and can significantly impact how the network is used overall.  More providers are moving toward this type of billing model.

In a second action, Public Knowledge along with Free Press, the New America Foundation and the Consumers Union also sent a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee calling on Congress to examine data caps and their impact on consumers.

“If data caps had a legitimate economic justification, they might be just a necessary annoyance. But they do not have such a justification. Arbitrary caps and limits are imposed by multichannel video providers that also provide broadband Internet access, because the providers have a strong incentive and ability to protect their legacy, linear video distribution models from emerging online video competition,” the letter said.

The Commerce Committee is set to take up the issue in a hearing today.

In 2009, the North Florida Broadband Authority was established to bring high speed internet access to the rural areas of Northern Florida. The Authority was funded through $30,000,000 in stimulus money. Since then, the project has had little to show for where that money has gone and rural residents still lack access or have gone to private sector providers.

On April 10, the Perry City Council took up the issue of its involvement in the Authority, according to an account in the Columbia County Observer, City Manager Bob Brown said that the county seat originally got involved in the project because it claimed that it would provide near free internet access. Now, over a year and $10 million later the project has nothing deployed and the city has access through a variety of private providers.

As CivSource reported last year, the project was investigated for its lack of deployment and clear accounting of time and budget. City officials in both Perry and Bradford note that while the project was allowed to resume by federal authorities, there are still enough questions about when the project will actually start providing service that they are getting out.

According to Brown, “They are kind of a dysfunctional organization. They pay a lot of high salaries. For example, their executive director makes $150,000 a year and is asking for some enhancements to that.”

In another Columbia County Observer account, Bradford city officials left the project noting that the grant funding requires municipalities to provide partial matching funds for the work in their area. City officials are concerned about providing funds to an organization that has already been investigated and often acts without the advice of legal counsel.

The Authority says that they will be able to start providing access in January of 2013, as long as everything goes according to the current plan. The Authority is working with technology companies Level 3 and Calix to complete the work.

The response opens with a blistering indictment of the FCC decision- “The Commission encouraged—and, indeed, affirmatively required— LightSquared to deploy a nationwide 4G LTE network by 2015 to aid the Commission in achieving its broadband policy goals. LightSquared committed fully to meeting the Commission’s mandate, investing more than $4 billion to extend competitive broadband access to hundreds of millions of consumers. The basic legal framework that enabled this investment in America’s future was established by a final Commission order almost seven years ago, after a four-year rulemaking process, and a licensing process in which the GPS industry provided support for the network that it now seeks to destroy.”

From there the company lays out its case noting that if there is interference with GPS devices, because of the LightSquared network it’s not their fault. The company further explains that the interference at the core of the FCC’s case is not new and was in fact known during many of the early discussions of the network.

Indeed, the company paid $100,000 for a Department of Defense study which studied the effect of any interference and determined that the effects were not significant.

Now, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is claiming that the problematic interference impacts devices that except frequencies from outside of its band. LightSquared counters this claim by noting that industry should not be required to protect poorly designed unregulated devices that operate outside of their supposed function.

The claims from the NTIA are included in the FCC public notice which prompted the response from LightSquared. The Public Notice threatens LightSquared’s right to deploy any ground component at all, which breaks precedent from previous FCC actions. LightSquared’s waiver is also under threat which allows the network to deploy devices lacking satellite capability.

The waiver is necessary so that the company can deploy Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATCs) which push the network signal out into the world. Historically, the FCC has offered to change bands for providers which LightSquared points out but, the FCC is out of spectrum to give.

The company has indicated that it is also working with legal counsel to address a potential civil action should the FCC stick by the claims in the public notice. An earlier story from Politico indicates that a “Department of Defense official urged his colleagues in 2010 to “synch up” with the GPS industry in order to defeat LightSquared’s plans to build the nation’s first wholesale broadband network.” An issue which gives credence to the claim from LightSquared that they are being treated unfairly and may be part of a legal challenge.

CivSource has been following a bill championed by Republican Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, that would seek to limit municipalities in rural Georgia from creating their own municipal wifi networks, despite open admissions from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that they have no intention to continue building in those areas. On a conference call discussing the company’s earnings, Stephenson said “We’ve all been trying to find a broadband solution that was economically viable to get out to rural America, and we’re not finding one to be quite candid. The best opportunity we have is LTE.”

According to sources familiar with the bill, that bill will now be altered to become a study bill which will gather further information on broadband network access in the state.

Similar bills are still on the move in Minnesota and South Carolina. Following a playbook initially established by incumbent telecom providers in North Carolina. The Minnesota bill explicitly bans communities from creating their own networks to meet their needs. A surprising move, considering the state is already pushing forward on a large broadband expansion.

In South Carolina, the story is roughly the same. Although no movement is happening on the bill right now, the language suggests that telecom providers are seeking to keep municipalities from creating their own networks even when private providers have indicated that they will not bring services to the area.

Private providers are arguing that municipal networks create unfair competition, forcing them to lower their rates because municipalities have the ability to offer rates below cost. Even if true, we are left to wonder why this is a concern in areas where the providers themselves have said they do not plan to do business. According to a post on Ars Technica yesterday, Charter Communications in Minnesota has done this and apparently so quickly that they put hand written fliers in residents mailboxes. (See the image here.)

There is a new bright spot on the horizon, however, San Jose, California is upgrading an aging and barely used municipal wifi network in order to support municipal infrastructure services. However, the city has no plans to become a wireless provider for residents. Instead, users who happen to be near the network will be able to use it.

The city is building the network through an already existing private fiber network in its downtown district, where carriers cross-connect. The initiaive will expand the network from 1Gbps to 20Gbps.

The economic benefits of large broadband networks throughout states have been well illustrated. However, incumbent providers seem to feel that short term cost outlays will have a greater impact on their bottom line than adding new subscribers.

Doug Smith, currently chief network officer, and Marc Montagner, currently chief financial officer, will be named as interim co-chief operating officers, while the company completes the search for the new CEO. In addition, Philip A. Falcone, CEO and CIO of Harbinger Capital Partners, has been appointed to the company’s board of directors.

The company has much of its current funding from Harbinger which is considering legal action in light of recent government action over its proposed network. LightSquared utilizes frequencies for its wireless network that conflict with existing GPS devices. The US Commerce Department has indicated that it would be cost prohibitive to alleviate this interference, prompting the FCC to block further work on the network.

The company has approximately $6 billion in loans tied up in the project and has said that it may pursue civil action in order to keep the project alive.

“LightSquared’s objective, through its wholesale business model, is to provide increased competition and lower prices in the telecommunications industry, and to bring broadband cellular phone service to rural areas that currently don’t have such service and that has not and will not change. That has been our vision from day one,” said Mr. Falcone in a statement. “The absence of affordable and reliable wireless service options is frustrating for consumers, particularly in these challenging economic times.”

“We are, furthermore, committed to working with the appropriate entities to find a solution to the recent regulatory issues. We, of course, agree that it is critical to ensure that national security, aviation and the GPS communities are protected. I am confident that working together, we can solve this problem and bring the American consumer the lower priced 4G wireless alternative they need and deserve,” Mr. Falcone added.

Ohio is launching the first ever state-led initiative to provide a statewide 100 Gigabits (Gbps) per second broadband network. The state wants to leverage its existing medical research and university network to bring companies and funding into the state in order to create jobs and grow the economy.

Under a recently approved agreement with Cisco and Juniper, Ohio will invest approximately $10 million to lay over 1,800 miles of fiber, and increase its current 10 Gbps capacity to 100 Gbps. At this speed, every one of Ohio’s 1.8 million enrolled K-12 students could download an eBook simultaneously in just over two minutes.

At the event, Governor Kasich noted that in a hospital setting at this speed, “300,000 x rays could be transferred in one minute, 8.5 million electronic medical records could be transferred in one minute.”

This expansion leverages the fiber optic network operated by OARnet, a member of the Ohio Board of Regents Ohio Technology Consortium. The 100 Gbps network will connect Ohio’s major metropolitan areas to northern and southern connection points of Internet2, a nationwide advanced networking consortium led by the research and education community, spanning U.S. and international institutions who are leaders in the worlds of research, academia, industry and government.

So far, the network is gaining traction with the private sector, Cisco has recognized the network as transformative for the state. Venture capital firm Kliner Perkins has also invested in medical research in the state.

State officials are working with both the university system and the hospital system to create a medical corridor that will run on the new network and leverage existing facilities such as the state’s world class medical simulation center in order to attract research dollars and new businesses.

“We want to build a medical corridor and become a hub for technology like neuromodulation,” the Governor said.

LightSquared is a hedge fund backed technology company that proposed a new wholesale network for broadband services powered through satellite communications airwaves. The company claimed that the network would help expand broadband into rural areas.

LightSquared purchased rights to frequencies for its proposed network, however those bands were very close to the GPS bands and created significant interference. Navigation systems for several types of vehicles were impacted because their GPS receivers lacked the ability to filter out transmissions from LightSquared in order to continue functioning.

The Commerce Department has said that fixing the interference problem would be cost prohibative in order to accomodate use by a single company. The company said in a statement that it remains committed to finding a solution with the federal government.

Philip Falcone, the founder of the hedge fund invested in the country will likely be forced to sell the frequencies if no solution is found. Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners has invested $3 billion in the wireless venture.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is also mapping out a legal strategy which may include litigation if no solution is presented. The company has $1.6 billion in loans. The Defense Department and several farm equipment makers are joining with the Commerce Department in pushing the FCC to keep the project from moving forward.

The bill SB 313 introduced by Sen. Majority Leader Chip Rogers, would prevent public broadband providers from paying for communication networks with tax or government funds and from offering their services at below-cost prices. The Senator claims that the measure is needed to “level the playing field,” for broadband providers.

But, Google and others disagree. In a letter to officials the company writes, “…this bill, if enacted, will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper work force development and diminish the quality of life in Georgia.”

Representatives from several rural cities and counties in the state went before lawmakers last week to argue against the bill. Advocates for the bill say that the state’s needs are being met by private companies and state budgets shouldn’t pay for services already being provided. However, as CivSource reported last month, private providers have refused to build networks in many parts of the state.

Rural officials argued that in the face of those refusals, they should be allowed to provide the service themselves as it is vital to municipal infrastructure.

Representatives from broadband providers have said the bill encourages more fairness. Debate over the measure will continue with the potential for a vote expected in the coming months.