CTC President Joanne Hovis will speak today on a panel discussion about local broadband planning in Urbana, Illinois. The event, “Models for Building Local Broadband: Public, Private, Coop, Nonprofit,” will bring together other experts in local telecommunications and public broadband for an open discussion of the benefits and challenges of various local broadband strategies.

The cities of Urbana and Champaign are in the midst of constructing a public network using federal grant funds. Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband, known as UC2B, is expected to bring high-speed Internet to 10 percent of the community. Urbana-Champaign has recently applied to expand its network through a public-private partnership with Gigabit Squared, and is actively seeking other potential partners in its efforts to expand broadband in the public interest.

The forum will be broadcast live at 5:30 EST/4:30 CDT on Urbana Public Television as a presentation of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. Streaming is available through Urbana Public Television and through Ustream, where viewers can participate via live chat. The recorded broadcast will be made available in the Independent Media Center’s video archive.

Comm Daily reported Tuesday on a National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) webinar in which CTC President Joanne Hovis discussed what she sees as the ongoing economic benefits created by the Recovery Act broadband funding.

As Ms. Hovis noted, awardees of Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants are now entering the final year of their projects, so they will soon be able to take advantage of new fiber optic infrastructure. In the wake of the federally funded projects, she also reports seeing the emergence of new projects funded at the local level.

But according to Ms. Hovis, BTOP communities across the country have already seen significant economic benefits from their projects. “What I saw was the creation of jobs just in the process of planning, partnering, and building projects or expanding existing projects in order to prepare grant applications to compete for BTOP funds,” she said.

Read the full story in Comm Daily here.

CTC congratulates the winners of the 2012 Digital Counties Survey awards from the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties. The awards, which recognize the strategic use of technology and success in governance through IT policies and practices, were given to counties nationwide. Among the winners were CTC clients in Maryland (Baltimore, Charles, and Montgomery counties), Oregon (Clackamas County), Virginia (Fairfax and Loudoun counties), and Washington (King County).

More details about the awards are available in Government Technology magazine’s story on the winners.

Howard County, Maryland, a leader in statewide public broadband development and longtime CTC client, is one of 19 counties nationwide to receive a Best in Category Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties (NACo). The award recognizes the County’s oversight of the Inter-County Broadband Network (ICBN) initiative.

Under the leadership of County Executive Ken Ulman and CIO Ira Levy, Howard County staff comprise the project management team, which oversees the fiber optic network’s engineering and construction in each of ICBN’s nine member jurisdictions. Once operational, the ICBN is expected to save each jurisdiction significant operating costs, while replacing aging copper infrastructure with a state-of-the-art, high-speed network. CTC congratulates Howard County, and is proud to be a partner in a project that is increasingly recognized at the national level.

CTC Technology & Energy President Joanne Hovis presented the findings of our research projects, Broadband in Garrett County: A Strategy for Expansion and Adoption, at a public meeting in Oakland, Md. today. The study found that Garrett County is well-connected compared to other rural communities throughout the United States, but nevertheless lags urban and suburban areas throughout the rest of the state in terms of service availability and connection speed.

CTC’s report delineated several recommendations for County leaders, including building out middle-mile fiber infrastructure and educating County residents about the benefits of expanded broadband access.

CTC also proposed that the County consider making a $1.2 million investment in a last-mile wireless network using TV White Spaces (TVWS) technology; that recommendation included a system-level engineering design and a detailed financial analysis. The design includes six discrete service areas including approximately 2,873 homes and businesses. A TVWS base station would connect to County or One Maryland Broadband Network (OMBN) fiber Internet backbone in each service area. The design would support symmetrical speeds of up to 3 or 4 Mbps for each subscriber.

Following a kick-off meeting in April, CTC is engaged in an ongoing project to identify communications gaps and evaluate potential solutions for the Baltimore Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), a regional emergency preparedness planning effort that brings together emergency management personnel, information officers, and public safety officials from the region’s jurisdictions (the cities of Annapolis and Baltimore, and Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, and Howard counties), as well as representatives from the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA). The UASI program is funded by the Department of Homeland Security, which provides grants to high-density regions that are at risk for terrorism.

CTC Technology & Energy congratulates Garrett County, Md. on receiving a $250,000 broadband infrastructure grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). The grant, which will be matched by the County, will fund fiber optic infrastructure and the electronics necessary to provide broadband service to a range of schools and other important County sites.

The ARC-funded project dovetails with the One Maryland Broadband Network, funded under the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), which is constructing fiber across the state to connect more than 1,000 community anchor institutions.

CTC is proud of its ongoing work with the County on broadband planning issues, and commends ARC on recognizing the importance of broadband infrastructure as a tool for economic development in rural communities.

CTC congratulates Charles Benton, Chairman and CEO of the Benton Foundation, on his nomination by President Obama to the National Museum and Library Services Board. The Benton Foundation has, for more than 30 years, promoted communications and technology in the public interest. Mr. Benton’s work, in particular, has focused on issues such as the digital divide, using media to expand civic participation, and telecommunications policy at the federal, state, and local levels.

The official White House press release on Mr. Benton’s appointment can be found here.

CTC Technology & Energy has kicked off its project to develop an emergency communications plan for the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association (TVPPA). Following an information-gathering session with TVPPA members and stakeholders, CTC is conducting a survey of association members to gauge their current state of emergency preparedness, anticipated communications needs, and obstacles to regional cooperation. CTC will also assess the current emergency communications processes among the utilities, and develop solutions based on the members’ current and potential resources.