Peter Cochrane's Video Blog: DIY broadband

Hi, this is Peter Cochrane for Silicon.com and this morning I'm in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole is perhaps the epitome of small town America. A delightful place and a really nice place to work. But the last time I was here, it was really quite difficult to get online and there wasn't an awful lot of bandwidth when you did. But today it's easy to get online and I've got an awful lot of bandwidth, in fact I've got more bandwidth here than I've had anywhere in North America. What has happened? Well the local community have banded together, put their own company in place and provided their own bandwidth. The local network provider, a phone company, couldn't make a business case to do anything. These people have got dark fibre, they've installed their own fibre and a huge wi-fi network around this small town. The net result is every coffee shop, every hotel and an awful lot of the houses are wide open. Everywhere you go in this town you can get online with ease. I'm just wondering why the rest of the world can't be like this? See you next time!