I’ve run ISP and data center infrastructure in Northern Illinois for twenty years. I helped start an internet exchange in 2014.
Most of what gets written about this stuff is wrong in ways that matter. Not maliciously wrong. Just written by people who’ve never had to make the system work. This site is the correction.
Background
I’m CTO at DNA Communications, a CLEC in Rochelle, Illinois. In 2014 I co-founded FD-IX. The idea was to bring an internet exchange to markets that didn’t have one. Before all that I built a WISP, Intelligent Computing Solutions, from scratch. It covered DeKalb County, starting in 2004.
I run most of the content for The Brothers WISP, the longest-running podcast in the WISP industry.
WISPA recognized me with the President’s Award of Excellence in 2021 and the Knights of the Black Tie in 2013. I’ve spoken at WISPAPALOOZA and DataCenter Chicago on peering, open IX models, and industry forecasting.
What you’ll find here
Mostly data centers, and what they do to the grid and to public finances. Broadband and telecom policy come up a lot, too. The approach doesn’t change with the topic. I take the story that’s going around and hold it up against the actual numbers. Where they don’t match, that’s the article.
Standards
I check claims against the public record, not against what an advocacy group says the record says. The actual documents, and I provide the links to them. I pull tariffs, studies, legal dockets, property records, etc. What do the facts actually say?
Trade groups and single-issue advocates, on either side, give me leads. They don’t get cited as sources, and if one shows up in an article it’s labeled by its position. Five outlets running the same paragraph is one wire story. It isn’t five confirmations.
Data doesn’t transfer between markets. A water figure from an arid Southwest site tells you nothing about a Great Lakes site until someone checks the Great Lakes site.
So every piece gets pinned to its own market. The utility has to be the right one. So does the state tax code, and so does the grid operator. Around here that’s mostly been ComEd territory and PJM, because that’s where the reporting has been. Illinois property tax law, too. If a claim depends on conditions somewhere else, I say so. I don’t import it.
Before anything publishes, I run four passes on my own argument:
- The strongest version of my position.
- The weakest link in it.
- The strongest version of the opposing case.
- The weakest version of the opposing case.
The third one is the gate. If the strongest case against me holds up, I change the conclusion or I don’t publish.
The fourth is there so I can spot a weak objection and leave it alone. Knocking one down proves nothing. Spending space on it is a way of dodging the real one.
Wrong claims aren’t all wrong the same way. A problem might be everywhere, or only in one market, or a single bad incident that got treated like a trend. The number itself can get stretched. It can get cherry-picked, or blamed on the wrong cause. Sometimes somebody just made it up. A contested claim is different. It isn’t wrong, and I won’t call it false.
Collapsing all of that into “misinformation” is itself a way of getting it wrong.
Corrections
Errors get corrected in place, not scrubbed quietly. When a fact in a published piece turns out wrong, the article text is corrected and a dated note is added at the bottom stating what changed and why. If you find an error, use the contact link below.
Disclosures
My day job is a small ISP. Our customers are small businesses, and what we sell isn’t what hyperscale data centers buy. A tire shop doesn’t have much stake in how cars get designed. Same idea. My side job is a small internet exchange in tier-2 markets, connecting small ISPs to streaming media. That’s a different business from hyperscale data-center interconnection, too.
I could run ads or take sponsors. I won’t. This site is self-funded. No advertiser relationships, no sponsorships, no paid placements have run here, and none will.
Contact
For corrections, press, or industry inquiries: LinkedIn.