This week: Cabot Mayor Ken Kincade, Connect2First's Candace Looper, DZS' Geoff Burke and Irby Utilities' Josh Collver on their partnership to launch the first city-owned fiber network in the state of Arkansas.
This episode features a conversation with Ken Kincade, mayor of Cabot, Arkansas; Candace Looper, sales and marketing director at Connect2First Internet; Geoff Burke, SVP of marketing and investor relations at DZS; and Josh Collver, director of operations at Irby Utilities.
We discuss their partnership to launch Connect2First, a fiber network operated by the First Electric Cooperative in Cabot, Arkansas, (which was also a finalist in the digital divide use case category in Light Reading's Leading Lights awards). We get into the details of what Cabot's connectivity needs were when the city initiated this project, why they went the electric co-op route for broadband delivery despite legal hurdles, lessons learned along the way and more.
Here are a few topics covered in this conversation:
Background on the city of Cabot and its connectivity needs prior to this project (03:35)
History of First Electric Cooperative and its decision to build a fiber network (08:42)
Initial hurdles faced with this deployment (12:32)
How, why and when partners DZS and Irby got involved (15:20)
What work is still ongoing to get people connected (20:10)
What community outreach has looked like throughout this project (22:08)
Advice for other municipalities considering a city-owned broadband network (27:10)
Click the caption button on the podcast player for a lightly edited transcript.
Read more about:
The DivideYou May Also Like
