Most Popular Books by David Talbot

Book review of Professor E.H. Swift''s ''Roman sources of Christian art'', New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.

This report describes a multi-year effort by the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to establish a robust and versatile communications infrastructure to better serve its citizens. The town''s municipal utility, Concord Municipal Light Plant, or CMLP, built a 100-mile fiber optic network as a backbone for a smart grid, and then used the network to deliver high-speed Internet access to homes and businesses, competing with Comcast. With the fiber installed, the town realized significant savings on municipal communications costs and generated new fiber-leasing revenue. CMLP recently launched a strategic planning effort to use the smart grid network and the data it generates to reduce peak power demand and costs, and to reduce systemwide greenhouse gas emissions. CMLP may earn additional revenue by allowing the New England transmission system to use parts of CMLP''s smart grid to balance regional electricity loads. And Concord now has the potential to expand its Internet access business beyond town boundaries, starting in neighboring Acton.

This report describes the development and recent expansion of HG&E Telecom, the fiber optic network division of Holyoke Gas and Electric (HG&E) in Holyoke, Massachusetts. HG&E is one of 41 longstanding municipal light plants providing electricity service in Massachusetts, of which 10 offer Internet access and other telecom services to retail customers, and 31 do not. HG&E Telecom competes with Comcast and Charter and serves approximately 300 business customers. It saves the municipality more than $300,000 per year. Its revenue has increased by 10 percent over the past two years and it has expanded into new lines of business. Given that data transport needs are growing while electricity sales are flattening, the record of HG&E Telecom suggests opportunities for other municipal electric utilities across the country, as long as they are in states that haven''t raised barriers to the provision of such services.