This article is the first in a series, about Community Broadband
services in the City of Fort Pierce, Florida and surrounding area.
These articles are written from the perspective of Fort Pierce
Utilities Authority (FPUA), one provider of Community Broadband to
its customers.

FPUA provides many services to its community, including electricity,
water, wastewater, natural gas, and various communication services
to its community. Some of these communication services are high
speed, or high bandwidth, and are therefore classified as broadband
services. The word broadband is short for "broad bandwidth," and is
used for communication services with large (broad) capacity or speed
(bandwidth). The term, "Community Broadband" refers to the
broadband services of a community, in this case Fort Pierce and its
surrounding area.

Each of these articles will have an overview at the end, with
information on how to access all past and future articles, as they
become available.

The next article will address the nature of fiber optic
communications, and the role of optical fiber in Community
Broadband. Of all the communications media in common use today,
fiber optics provides the fastest worldwide pathways for telephone,
television and Internet data.

Don't miss an article! Join the NEW mailing list now at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FPUAnet/ .

By Don Landin
FPUAnet Communications