Jason Bird Explains how Princeton Kept Jobs in Community with Publicly Owned Fiber Network
b"Jason Bird is the Electrical Superintendent at the city of Princeton Utilities in Illinois. He joins us for the 30th episode of our Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] Podcast to explain why Princeton built a rather unique network. Princeton has built a fiber network to connect some of the local businesses and uses broadband over power lines (BPL) to provide a low cost option for area residents.\\n\\nPrinceton offers another example of how a community can build and own the infrastructure while partnering with a local company that will provision the services. This approach appeals to many towns that recognize the benefits of ensuring the network is owned by the community but do not want to provide services themselves.\\n\\nThis network helped save hundreds of jobs and has benefited the community in many ways -- just one of which is that they were selected as a site that allowed families to videochat with our troops deployed abroad over the holidays. \\n\\nRead our coverage of Princeton's network here.\\n\\nRead the transcript from this episode here.\\n\\nWe want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.\\n\\nThis show is 21 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!\\n\\nListen to previous episodes here. You can download the Mp3 file of this episode directly from here.\\n\\nFind more episodes in our podcast index.\\n\\nThanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons."