MOUNTAIN CONNECT ANNOUNCES AGENDA FOR 6TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Dais Includes Both Local and National Leadership Aimed at Helping Colorado Be More Competitive Through Better Broadband

Keystone, Colorado (May 23, 2016) Today Mountain Connect, Colorado and the West’s leading conference dedicated to facilitate and accelerate the developing transformative broadband infrastructure to promote innovation and sustainable economic prosperity for participating communities in Colorado and beyond announced its agenda and speaker line-up. The conference is being held at the Keystone Resort & Conference Center.

Found online at www.mountainconnect.org, the agenda for this year’s conference is designed not only to help provide the sixty-plus communities in Colorado who have recently “opted out” of SB 152, restricting municipalities from providing Internet service, with a path forward.

“This path forward,” explains co-conference organizer Jeff Gavlinski, “must include creative solutions in geographically challenging regions like much of Colorado. The conference theme, Hybrid Infrastructure Supporting Smart Cities, is intended to help communities make some tough but smart choices when designing a network to serve their broadband needs.”

The agenda features sessions and topics not covered anywhere else, including:

• Goals For Our Next Administration
• The State of Colorado Broadband
• What is the Impact of Open Access?
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Internet of Things Universe

National and local leaders speaking at he conference include:

• Jonathan Adelstein, former FCC chairmain and current CEO of PCIA.
• Members of the Colorado Governor’s Cabinet including Anna Ewing (Colorado Innovation Network & OEDIT), Irv Halter(Colorado Department of Legal Affairs), Suma Nallapati (Colorado OIT) and Jordan Beezley (Broadband Fund Administrator, Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies).
• Ryan Palmer, Chief of the Telecommunications Access Policy Division (TAPD) of the Wireline Competition Bureau of the FCC.
• Phil Weiser of Silicon Flatirons and and Executive Director and Founder of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado.
• Brien Bell, Google’s Fiber Expansion Lead, West Region.

“Every year, including this year’s Mountain Connect,” explains co-conference organizer Audrey Danner, “we see more and more communities taking their economic future and with it broadband plans in their own hands and come to our conference for advice and counsel no matter where they are in their journey.”

About Mountain Connect

Mountain Connect 2016 will be held from June 5^th – 7^th at the Keystone Resort & Conference Center. For six years, Mountain Connect has been the leading conference for communities and broadband leadership in Colorado and the West. Learn more about Mountain Connect at www.mountainconnect.org.