Neighbors Helping Neighbors For Fiber In Rural Tennessee: Newport And Morristown Join Forces Community Broadband Bits Podcast 300
b'An increasing interest in publicly owned network projects has also spurred an increase in creative collaborations as communities work together to facilitate deployment, especially in rural areas. This week, we talk with Sharon Kyser, Marketing and Public Relations Manager for Newport Utilities (NU) in Newport, Tennessee, and Jody Wigington, General Manager and CEO of Morristown Utility Systems (MUS), also in Tennessee, for episode 300 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.We\\u2019ve written about MUS Fibernet and had Jody on the show several times to talk about how they built their own network and the ways it has improved the electric utility and helped the community. Now, they\\u2019ve entered into a partnership with their neighbors in Newport, who also want to reap the benefits of public ownership. Sharon tells us how the people in Newport\\xa0need better services, economic development, and how her organization is working with MUS to make that vision a reality.The two communities are working together to develop a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network for residents and businesses in the NU service area. MUS is offering the expertise they\\u2019ve developed over the past 12+ years along with other technical and wholesale services that will greatly reduce costs and deployment time for NU. This is an example of rural communities sticking together and is an example we hope to see more often in the future.In the interview, Jody also mentions a partnership in the works with Appalachian Electric Cooperative; we spoke to him and General Manager Greg Williams about the proposed collaboration for episode 203 of the podcast. Listen to that conversation here.This show is 30 minutes long and can be played on this page or\\xa0via iTunes\\xa0or the tool of your choice\\xa0using this feed.Read the transcript for this show here.You can download\\xa0this\\xa0mp3 file directly from here. Listen to\\xa0other episodes here\\xa0or view all episodes\\xa0in our index.Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is\\xa0Warm Duck Shuffle\\xa0and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.'