Giving Compass' Take:

• Public broadband is springing up in smaller cities providing residents and businesses with cheap, fast, reliable internet that is often better than commercial service in big cities.

• How can philanthropy help start and spread these networks? Should big cities be considering public broadband? 

• Learn why broadband should be an infrastructure priority for America. 

They are mostly towns you’ve probably never heard of, places like Sandy, Ore., Leverett, Mass., Lafayette, La., and Longmont, Colo. Yet these smaller communities, and hundreds more like them, have something even the techiest big cities such as New York, San Francisco and Seattle don’t have: widespread, fast and well-priced broadband service.

In arguably the most forward-looking part of the economy, some smaller localities have the edge. They made it for themselves by developing their own broadband networks, typically employing the latest fiber-optic technology.

Private providers like Verizon or Comcast also build broadband networks in both big cities and smaller towns. But the technologies used vary, and if fiber-optic lines are used, companies don’t always extend them into the home.

Publicly owned broadband networks, on the other hand, exist for one purpose: to give the most people the best service at the lowest possible prices. They do this because they know it benefits their residents’ quality of life and incomes.

Read the full article about broadband for small towns by Alex Marshall at Governing magazine.