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F2C: Freedom to Connect Presents Models for Stimulus Funding

New networks that are models for projects the broadband stimulus package could fund will be front and center at F2C: Freedom to Connect, here on March 30 & 31. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA) sets out $7.2 billion for building networks that increase end-user choice and serve under-served areas. F2C: Freedom to Connect, March 30 & 31, features builders of municipal networks in Lafayette, LA, Glasgow, KY, northeast Ohio and rural Vermont.

Now in its fifth year, F2C: Freedom to Connect has established itself as the premier venue for tomorrow's technology policy news, featuring speakers such as Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-led the Obama FCC transition, long before they rose to national prominence. This year, featured speakers include San Francisco CIO Chris Vein, Seattle CTO William Schrier, FCC Chief Technologist Jon Peha, and Municipal network visionary Billy Ray of Glasgow KY. David S. Isenberg, the producer of F2C and founder of Isen.com, calls Billy Ray, "The father of U.S. municipal networking."

Other speakers at F2C include Lev Gonick, the founder of OneCommunity, a public-private partnership to build high-speed networks across Northeast Ohio; Terry Huval, the director of the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) project in Lafayette, LA; and Massachusetts Telecom Commissioner Sharon Gillett.

It features European thinking on advanced networks from, e.g., Herman Wagter of Amsterdam's Citynet fiber-to-the-home project, and Benoit Felten of Yankee Group Europe. It features provocative policy observations from Commissioner Timothy Denton of Canada's telecom regulator (CRTC).

Former senior AT&T executive Tom Evslin observes, "F2C: Freedom to Connect is the absolutely unbuttoned-down deep thought conference of telecommunications. You'll find movers and shakers here (some ducked down in hiding); you'll find thinkers; and you'll find those who have been and those who will be the guiding forces in telecommunications."

If fiber, municipal broadband policy, and internet infrastructure, are stimuli for you, don't miss F2C: Freedom to Connect. Whether you're coming to find stimulus funding, customers, best practices, or to have a voice as policy is set, you can register for $595 now (or $795 at the door) at http://freedom-to-connect.net.