February 26, 2007
My cousin and buddy Rick Birmingham (Tech Circuit Rider for MAP for Nonprofits) sent me a fun article last week from CNN.com (Web forums replacing coffee shops for farmers). The article reported:
“Fifty-one percent of U.S. farms have Internet access, according to a July 2005 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 48 percent in 2003. More than two-thirds of them, however, still use dial-up modems to connect.”
We both found this to be surprisingly low. When I get some time I’m going to try to research more current number and/or statistics on Minnesota farmers.
Rick read about the article in an email newsletter published by The Baller Herbst Law Group. I’m pleased to announce that I have just joined the email list myself. I have heard wonderful things about it – and have had several people forward interesting issues to me in the past.
You can join the list by sending an email to the list owner info (at) baller.com. (Replace (at) with @ – I just didn’t want to subject them to unwanted spam by posting the full email address here.)
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Research | 
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Posted by Ann Treacy
February 26, 2007
I spent the weekend in Walker MN at the Adventure North Resort. I loved it – but I was off line all weekend. (My kids loved that part!)
I drove home after the big snowfall. (It seemed as though a foot or so fell everywhere between Walker and St. Paul.) I saw a sign in Pine River that warmed me up – Free Wi Fi at the DQ.
I didn’t stop as we have already spent more than an hour and had only gone 30 miles – but I have it in my mind’s map for the next time I travel up that way. Soft serve and Internet access is tough to beat on a summer day. I thought it was such a good idea to attract travelers.
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MN | 
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Posted by Ann Treacy
February 24, 2007
I’ve been noodling around with Bill Coleman and others on the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Project team to put the finishing details on the design for a modest new grant program we’d like to launch to help spur the implementation of broadband-intensive applications. (See the Light Speed Program Concept paper.) 
Our goal is to demonstrate the value of robust ultra-high speed networks for increasing community competitiveness and quality of life. As a foundation that cares about vital rural communities, Blandin thinks we might have a unique role to play in helping to reduce barriers to advanced application deployment. And we think that it would help strengthen the case for why Minnesota needs to plan for truly “big broadband” if we could point to some real life examples on the ground.
We want to work with networks that are capable of 10 Mbps symmetrical communications. This will be challenging, as there aren’t that many of those kind of networks operating yet in our state. Another challenge is to find institution-to-resident or resident-to-resident applications that demand that much broadband.
So I was thrilled to learn from our trusty librarian-cum-weblogger-master Ann Treacy that she has snagged some free conference passes to the Killer App conference in Fort Wayne, IN at the end of April. I’ve decided that might well be a good place to look for bandhog applications. And I’ve never been to Indiana. So I’m going to take Ann up on her offer. Anyone else planning to attend?
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Conferences, MN | 
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Posted by Bernadine Joselyn
February 20, 2007
Here’s a last minute reminder for anyone with a little time tomorrow. Matt Wenger of PacketFront will be speaking via videoconference to the Get Broadband Community. Read the full story for details on times and places for video spots around Minnesota.
We’ll try to report back with notes from Matt’s presentation.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ann Treacy
February 16, 2007
An article (Senate Panel Debates Emergency Broadband Network) caught my eye yesterday; it outlined the beginning of a saga about whether or not to use federal resources to build an emergency broadband network or to sell those resources. At issue is whether spectrum, which is being freed up by the transition among television broadcasters to a digital signal from analog, should be used for the creation of a national emergency broadband network as opposed to sold to the highest bidder.
There appear to be (at least) four sides to the debate:
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Some folks want to earmark the spectrum for an emergency broadband network, including Cyren Call, a compnay that would like to lead the effort to create to create the network.
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Some folks feel that the federal government would be better off with the revenue from selling the spectrum.
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Some folks question the need for more broadband for an emergency national netowrk and propose making better use of existing spectrum. (Apparently emergency services currently have 49.7 megahertz; the debate here is about 30 megahertz.)
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Some folks are wary that private businesses are suggesting that the spectrum be earmarked only so that they can profit by getting involved in the project.
While the specifics of an emergency broadband network are fairly new to me and it’s been years since I’ve heard much about spectrum for any use – the issues sounded very similar to those that arise with municipal broadband networks. It was interesting to see the similarities and the differences.
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Posted by Ann Treacy
February 14, 2007
In his announcement for President, Barack Obama mentioned a need to “lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.”
It is great to see the prominence of the issue.
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Posted by Ann Treacy
While the immediate focus of the article is local to San Francisco, the items addressed are interesting to any municipality looking at WiFi – and very often his point is that issues that are being taken to task in San Francisco really belong to a national discussion. He does this by striking out against views that he labels as extreme – especially the left leaning views.
Sorry for the late notice – but I just got an email invitation to an online event that I thought looked interesting. Marsha Zager, editor of Broadband Properties’ applications section, 
I first found out about Matt last fall in Little Rock, AK while attending the 
