Monthly Archives: October 2007

Breathing Life into MN Rural Towns

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Mary Treacy sent me a great article from the Twin Cities Daily Planet (Technology: The driving force behind rural Minnesota change). The author, Lee Egerstrom is tracking the 342 Minnesota cities that had fewer than 1,000 people in the 2000 Census and the estimated 150 unincorporated communities that are commercial and residential hubs of rural townships.

This article is the second installment. I think I find the whole series especially interesting as I travel around Ireland to see the economic development that has happened here. Tourism seems to fuel so much here.
Back to MN, Egerstrom talks specifically about Elbow Lakes and Ely in this article. Elbow Lake is using lots of agriculturally-focused technology to farm better and to allow farmers more freedom. In Ely they focused on how people use the Internet (not necessarily broadband – but as those of us who work remotely we know you can’t do it on dialup!) to allow them to work in Ely. They enjoy the beautiful amenities Ely has to offer – but stay in touch and/or run entire business over the Internet.

Egerstrom’s first article (in the series) introduced a theory called Ruttan-Hayami Model of Induced Innovation. It shows a relationship among: Resource Endowment, Cultural Endowments, Technology and Institutions. The health and nature of those relationships can help make a break a town. I’m reducing this quite a bit – but it reminded me a bit of Richard Florida’s Creative Classes – only this theory or perhaps Egerstrom’s fine description seems more suitable to rural areas and small town.

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Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Bill Carlson

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Another speaker bio from the upcoming Broadband conference…

Bill Carlson

Short bio
Moose Lake has always been an active supporter of technology. I am the Public Access & Technology Coordinator for the City of Moose Lake. I have been fortunate to participate in the following community projects:

• Twenty five (25) years ago Moose Lake signed a franchise agreement with a cable company to provide two-way public access television to the area. This allows us to broadcast live video protection from seven (7) locations throughout the community. The system works great without any outside intervention.
• The Moose Lake Community School was one of the original participants of an interactive television/classroom project. I was the staff member, who was responsible for the design, setup, and operation of the system for the school district.
• The Mercy Hospital & Health Care Center was part of the Rural Health School Project. They had weekly teleconference/telemedicine session with other participants. My responsibility was to setup and operate the local portion of the teleconference network. I also was responsible for the educational component to train the students on how the system worked.
• I designed, assisted in writing the grant, and responsible for the installation of the high-speed broadband network to providing internet access for the Moose Lake Public Library.
• I was the consultant for the implementation of the Moose Lake Community Broadband Network. The network includes a fiber optic backbone, a fixed wireless system, and a WiFi system.
• I am the Project Coordinator for the Blandin “Get Broadband” Project.
• I am currently working on the public community surveillance system which will be interoperable and have the ability to be monitored at the Emergency Response Center.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days?

Moose Lake is trying to incorporate the advantages of using broadband communications technologies into their Emergency Management Plan. The specific portion of the plan that addresses Public Notification and Dissemination of Information is where I will concentrate my remarks.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

Sometime we get so focused of our local project that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Conferences are a great way to get a better insight of what is happening in other communities.

Brief Intro to ConnectKentucky

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KentuckyThanks to Bernadine Joselyn for sending me Wiring rural America, a article published in the Economist last month. I was so excited to get it because I had actually been meaning to learn more about ConnectKentucky.

I learned about ConenctKentucky (a little bit) while listening to a recent senate committee meeting. So, it’s an example that policy makers know about – and one they think works very well.

According to the ConnectKentucky president, 98 percent of Kentucky will have access to inexpensive broadband by the end of the year. It sounds as if one of their first steps was to map interest and demand for broadband access. So smart in that a) helps you build a business plan and b) helps provide education that builds demand.

Kentucky is a shining star – and apparently they are bridging out to provide the same services to West Virginia and Tennessee. The article goes on to say that the rest of the US has not been as successful and one of the reasons is that some of the money intended to support rural broadband through the RUS (Rural Utilities Service) has gone to suburban areas that didn’t really need it.

I’m sure that’s true I’ve certainly heard it before – but I think/hope that the FCC and the RUS are starting to recognize the potential of that problem and are trying to be more careful about who gets the funding. Mostly I enjoyed the article for the brief description of ConnectKentucky.

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Pat Wickham

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Another speaker bio from the upcoming Broadband conference…

Pat WickhamPat Wickham, BSN, PHN, Director of Home Care and Hospice Services for Lakewood Health System Home Care and Hospice program.

Short Bio
I have worked for Lakewood Health System for 20 years, beginning my career as an LPN in the care center setting. Lakewood Health System has been instrumental in assisting me with career goals to achieve baccalaureate education in the field of nursing and to ladder up to my current position as Director of Home Care and Hospice. Our agency is a rural home care/hospice program servicing approximately 100 home care patients and 15 hospice patients in the heart of central Minnesota on a monthly average. We provide services to home care and hospice patients mainly in Todd County, but also provide services to patients referred in Cass, Wadena, Crow Wing, Morrison, and Ottertail Counties. We employ 3 RN Clinical Care Coordinators, 6 Staff RN’s, 2 Staff LPN’s, 20 Home Health Aides, 1 Licensed Social Worker, 1 Chaplain, 10 hospice/palliative care volunteers and 2 departmental secretaries. Our main office is located in Staples, Minnesota, but we have satellite offices in Long Prairie and Pillager, MN. Our intention as a grant recipient is to learn how we can achieve an increased level of customer service and improved health status of our patients, while controlling costs and need for “hands on care” by utilizing telemedicine services through broadband applications in the rural communities we service.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days?

I have been thinking about the use of telemedicine services in some of our very rural communities and have been wondering is the use of these services may indeed be limited by the lack of broadband applications in those areas. This will be something that we will need to investigate as we move forward in our attempts to provide telemedicine services to patients in those rural communities.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

I am hoping to hear about all the different kinds of projects that are being initiated with broadband services. There may be some information/material that will be helpful to us in our planned telemedicine project.

Hillary Clinton’s Broadband Strategy

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Yesterday Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton talked about her broadband strategy. Actually she talked about her strategy to create jobs and spur economic growth – bit it included a broadband strategy.

Here is what she said specifically as posted on her blog:

[1] Establish a national broadband strategy called Connect America. Hillary will strengthen tax incentives for extending broadband to underserved areas. She will support state and local broadband initiatives, from new wireless technologies to high-speed fiber optics. And she will change the FCC rules so we that we finally have an accurate, detailed picture of broadband deployment and penetration rates. At present, the FCC data is unreliable because it is based on loose estimates and outdated standards. Hillary will also create a new public private partnership, modeled on the successful ConnectKentucky program which has dramatically improved broadband access. The initiative has stimulated significant private investment and has increased the state’s broadband coverage rate to over 90%.

I dug in a little deeper into her site to see what she meant by supporting state and local initiative and was happy to see that, “She also proposes financial support for state and local broadband initiatives.” Support without financial backing isn’t always the kind of support we need.

WCA Tracks Candidate’s Comments on Broadband

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WCAThe folks at  the Wireless Communications Association International were good enough to send me an update on their recent survey that revaled that 6 of the 17 Presidential candidates have announced a broadband policy while at least another 6 have yet to make any statements on broadband.

WCA has created a web site that tracks candidates’ comments and policies related to broadband. You can track new by topic, party, or candidate. (

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Pete Royer

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We have another Speaker bio for the upcoming broadband conference…

Pete Royer

Short Bio
Currently Director of the Little Crow Telemedia Network, a 12 school technology Cooperative with 7 associate members. The LCTN provides broadband Internet to all 19 schools as well as Email filtering, centralized servers, videoconferencing and ITV. Through our cooperative purchasing with other K12 schools and Higher Ed entities in St. Cloud we offer low cost Broadband Internet and Internet 2 access. The LCTN is in the third evolution of fiber backbone equipment now operating at a gig backbone speed. The 19 districts share 30 mbps of Internet at just over $130 a month per district after Erate discounts.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

Learn what other people are doing, trying to do and see what aspects I can incorporate into our cooperative to aide our districts.

Relate to others how a cooperative can save districts money while providing increased Internet access, economies of scale (centralized server and services), technology integration into curriculum, cooperative training and many other benefits.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

What’s new, innovative and works!

Broadband Access in Fergus Falls

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I just ran across an article in the Fergus Falls Daily Journal (Broadband’s area impact remains spotty). It’s a good reminder of the reality of access in rural Minnesota and the importance of good broadband measurements.

Fergus has(at least) 2 broadband providers. Park Region Mutual Telephone Company claims that 95 percent of Park Region customers have access to broadband. Charter Communications out of the Twin Cities, said 100 percent of Fergus Falls customers have access to broadband.

It sounds, however as if once you get past the city borders access get a little shaky. There is one comment on the article that adds that he has dialup through Park Regional but is unable to get broadband access through them or anyone else

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: David Russell

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Another speaker bio for the Broadband conference:

David Russel

Short Bio
I work for Calix, where I am responsible for marketing Fiber-to-the-Home systems to non-traditional service providers. We call these service providers Innovators and they include Municipalities, Greenfield Developers, CLECs and increasingly, cable operators. For those of you not familiar with us, Calix is one of the largest broadband access companies serving North America and the largest Fiber-to-the-Home vendor outside of the Verizon deployments. Calix acquired Optical Solutions last year and since then has been growing the development team in our Plymouth, Minnesota location. All of the Fiber-to-the-Home development is done here in Minnesota. Before joining Optical Solutions in 2003, I worked for ADC Telecommunications for 19 years.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

Calix has deployed Fiber-to-the-Home systems in over 450 communities in the United States. Only about 10 of these have been done by Municipalities. There is a wealth of experience and information available to Municipalities on what has worked and what has not worked. My goal is to connect Municipalities with people and resources who have been there and done it, including the consultant community. It seems like to date Muncipalities are relying on a small circle of information sources that have little proven expertise in deploying Fiber-to-the-Home systems in rural communities in North America.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

Ironically, most of my time the past few years has been spent helping people deploy FTTH systems outside of Minnesota. I am looking forward to meeting people and becoming more of a community member in Minnesota FTTH world.

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Sheila Howk

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Another speaker bio for the Broadband conference…

Sheila HowkSheila Howk, currently the New Ulm Retail Economic Development Coordinator.

Short Bio:
I have a degree in Elementary Education and was the director of a charter school for seven years. In my current job I assist retailers and recruit additional retail to the community. I will be pursuing one facet of this going forward, working for a loyalty card for the retail community. I am married and have two children ages nine and six. We as a family enjoy camping, biking, and movies.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

Broadband is such an important part of our livelihood and a depiction of our success. I have realized over the last two years that retail is ever-changing and to succeed in today’s market, broadband is an essential cornerstone. New Ulm brought broadband awareness to the retail community as a sustainable tool. Broadband, website development, and that whole realm, does not have to an extreme expensive venture – but can be. I would share what we have learned this last year some of the do’s and don’ts of the broadband world.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

Continuation, I feel New Ulm has just undertaken a corner of what is out there for broadband assistance and opportunity. The struggle we would have is the personnel. Most retailers are already tapped for time and resources. A collaborative effort to employ someone to take care of the web presence would be the next phase. Learning on how to achieve this would be great.

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Bill Coleman

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Here’s another speaker Bio for the Broadband conference comming up next month. You may also recognize Bill as an occassional blog contributor.

Bill ColemanBill Coleman

Short Bio
I help communities make the link between telecommunications and economic development through my company, Community Technology Advisors. I work with the Blandin staff to implement the community oriented activities of the Blandin Broadband Initiative, including the 27 communities that participated in the Get Broadband program and the four current LightSpeed grantees. I am currently partnering with Mike O’Connor to facilitate the work of the Eden Prairie Technology Task Force. Right now, my economic development work is for Dakota Future, a countywide economic development organization serving Dakota County, MN.

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

It would be great to identify ways to truly partner with incumbent telecommunications providers. Right now, when communities believe the networks and services provided to their communities are deficient, there seem to be few incremental paths for leveraging improvements. The pre-conference Sesquicentennial event is designed to stimulate some shared understanding and creative thinking to the current deadlocked positions of communities and providers.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

I would like to learn more about the cable industry’s DOCSIS 3.0 operating system that can deliver over 100 Mb per second and when, realistically, we might see that deployed. I would also like to learn more about how open access networks stimulate entrepreneurial application development more effectively than services delivered over a closed network.

Good News and Bad News from Integra

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I seem to have a lot of news today – sorry! If I could think of a way to confine it to one post that wasn’t too abstract I’d do it but some days are just newsy. (Especially if you actually play over the weekend and ignore broadband until Monday.)

The Minneapolis/ St Paul Business Journal just ran an article on Integra upgrades (Integra Telecom plans $10 million network expansion). In August Integra bought Eschelon. Apparently they are preparing to invest in enhancing their broadband offerings and growing their fiber network by about 10 percent. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that they may cut staff in Minnesota as they streamline – but the expectation is that it will be less than 10 percent of the Eschelson staff.

You can learn more about the merger of Eschelon and Integra on their web site.

Misconceptions on Municipal Wireless Networks

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I stumbled onto an interesting article this weekend (The Top Five Misconceptions About the Success of Municipal Wireless Networks). The author is Mike Perkowski, chief operating officer of MuniWireless LLC – so he’s obviously a champion of municipal wireless networks.

He dispelled the following myths:

  1. Municipal wireless networking doesn’t work.
  2. Municipalities are competing with the private sector in building and operating their own networks.
  3. Service providers can’t make money in municipal wireless.
  4. Public access projects have been a failure.
  5. Big-city wireless initiatives are doomed to failure.

Broadband Conference: Speaker Intro: Mike O’Connor

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I have mentioned the upcoming Blandin Broadband Conference in earlier posts. It is one month away. I’m getting excited for it because I’m actually coming home for it!

To help everyone else get excited I have asked the speakers from the conference to send me a quick bio and to answer a few questions. That way we’d all get a chance to meet them a little bit online before we meet them at the conference.

My friend Mike O’Connor was the first to respond. (Thanks Mike!) I’ll post his intro below and I’ll post the others as I get them.

Mike O’ConnorMike O’Connor

Short Bio
I’m a community organizer, entrepreneur and tech-geek turned business-leader type person. I became moderately famous here in Minnesota as one of the people who popularized the Internet back in the mid-90’s. These days I divide my pretty-retired time between being a “domainer” (I’ve still got a gaggle of great domains to figure out) and serving on the ICANN Business Constituency.

I’ve done a fair amount of civic committee type stuff. A few of the recent things include; the St Paul Mayor’s Y2k Taskforce (chair), St Paul Mayor’s Education Taskforce (chair), Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission Working Group on Taxation of Telecommunications (member), St Paul Mayor’s High Tech Council (founding member), State of Minnesota Information Policy Council (member, Steering Committee), and the Lowertown Cyber Village Association (founding member). (Read more about Mike O’Connor)

What aspects of broadband are on your mind these days? (Or what info do you hope to impart at the conference?)

i’m obsessing about the need for better, and more consistent, methodologies for the studies that determine what municipalities do with broadband. having participated in several such studies, sometimes as a consultant and sometimes as a task-force member, i’m dismayed by how uneven the quality of the work is. my sense is that many municipalities are making pretty important decisions in a pretty haphazard way.

so i’m going to be lobbying for a better understanding of the phases of the planning projects, along with a shared definition of the tasks, deliverables and scale of each phase of the process. i think Blandin could help a lot by advancing this structure, and pointing municipalities at consultants that have a strong delivery track record.

What are you hoping to learn at the conference?

whether PacketFront has indeed hypnotized every broadband policy wonk in the state.

Libraries & Internet Access

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Thanks to Ann Higgins for sending me an article on libraries and Internet access (Libraries strained by Internet use).

Libraries are bursting at the seams with people wanted to access the Internet. Here are some of the interesting stats from a recent survey (Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007):

  1. library73 percent of libraries say they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities
  2. More than 30 percent of Americans do not own desktop computers or have Internet access at home.
  3. Visits to public libraries are way up — 1.3 billion in 2004, compared with 821.6 million a decade earlier
  4. “The queues at library computers are growing for three primary reasons, the survey said: Students seeking educational Web resources (67.7 percent); job seekers sending résumés and applications online (44 percent); and people trying to learn computer and Internet skills (29.8 percent).”

I was just talking about this with my brother in law today. When I moved to Ireland, it took 2 weeks to get broadband at home. The longest, crabbiest non-pregnant weeks of my life! I used the libraries everyday. Even when the library was closed I sat outside with my laptop glomming onto their WiFi.

So life was hard – but at least I had my laptop. For those who didn’t they got exactly 1 hour online. You had to sign up in advance – at least in the afternoon. Often you could walk right in before noon – if they weren’t having classes. My brother in law apparently didn’t have a laptop; they were stuck with 1 hour shots of Internet access when they were here from Australia.

I think access here is much like it is at home. I’ve certainly seen the same from afar. The computers at our local library were almost always filled – certainly filled after school. If a kid wants to go online they need a parent to watch – and say you’re kind of watching and kind of doing your own work from your laptop, sometimes they chastise you. (That is true in Ireland and Minneapolis.)

Anyways the article goes on to talk about how the libraries are jammed. They need more money – but they don’t really offer a solution. It seems as if it’s getting tougher for the libraries to even maintain regular hours. But as libraries close patrons losing more and more – with the loss of the Internet access.

The libraries are often held up an a bridge closing the digital divide – but they can’t do a great job if they don’t have funding to stay open, get broadband, and have computers, staff, and space to provide access!