Bristol Virginia and Tucson Arizona have been awarded the national 2008 Smart Community Award by Last Mile for their outstanding broadband and economic development initiatives. Bristol won for communities of fewer than 200,000; Tucson won for the larger populations.

I couldn’t find much more on the award – but I was able to out a little bit about Bristol from Last Mile Online and presumably the article fed into winning the award:

Bristol, Virginia – Birthplace to FTTH

OK maybe I need to get out there and watch a movie or something but I found the story of Bristol to be very interesting. It’s a must read for anyone who wonders how policy influences technology.

The city went with fiber in 1999 – but according to state law they couldn’t provide services to residents or businesses. They could lease services to another carrier. They had a deal and that fell through. Later in 1999, the laid wire to EMT services and went online. They overbuilt hoping to provide services to citizens eventually.

In 2001, they were allowed to provide phone service. In 2002, they could add Internet. They wanted to offer triple play but the cable company sued. In 2003 they could offer triple play.

For the geeky details: “Bristol’s access architecture is a passive optical network (PON) interconnected by a series of 2.5 gigabit per second (Gbps) resilient packet transport rings, Lane says. BVU chose Alcatel as its network supplier, and as an indication of how early Bristol entered the FTTP business, “We had ONT serial No. 1,” Kelley says.”