I’m still at the Broadband conference I have done my best to take notes during the Pre-Conference question/answer session.
Here’s the official description:
Panel Discussion – Tough Questions:
Panelists: JoAnne Johnson; Frontier Communications, Al Juhnke, State Representative 13-B, Danna Asche; IT Director, Cook County, Jeff Lueders, City of Lakeville , Ruthe Batulis; Dakota County Regional Chamber of Commerce, Dan Pecarina, Vice President of Technology, Hiawatha Broadband
Moderator: Mike O’Connor; President, O’Connor CompanyTough Questions Panel Discussion: Brave panel participants will answer questions for policy makers need answers. A panel of providers, community advocates and a leading legislative leader provide the answers.
And here’s my best attempt to take notes. I’ve tried to use names when I could – clearly using initials of the main speakers.
Here are my notes:
Question: Some communities see that their costs for broadband are not competitive (with other MN communities, with US communities and the world). How do we address that?
JJ: We (Frontier) need to stop saying we suck. Forget about the OECD. We seem to be behind because we have legacy broadband. Other countries started anew. Also we have so many more people than other counties.
We need to celebrate the stuff we do well otherwise we give ourselves a bad reputation.
DP: We (HBC) typically work with EDA (or other) to create a vision for the city. Competition and lower costs is not enough of a vision – you need business plan reasons for broadband. It makes sense to talk to the incumbent providers.
You can ask for them to provide bandwidth and/or ask them if they’d use your network (a la Open Access Network fashion).
Question: When telecommunications is so important why doesn’t the policy folks get more involved?
AJ: So far no one has done much with broadband (Fed and State wise). The other legislators would have a hard time sitting through the earlier presentations. Policy makers lack knowledge. There are only 10 people involved with the Telecommunications Policy Committee – they are the only ones who understand at all – and that knowledge often comes from the vendors and each provides their own spin.
The statewide cable franchising will be discussed on Friday.
Question: Telecos are pushing for statewide video franchising. Cities have fought this because they want local control/coverage. What’s up with that? (My words I got distracted and missed Mike’s eloquence.)
JL: Cities need greater control of their right of way. Safety and customer service is better served by locals. Franchise fees are important to cities. PEG access funds are huge locally to support local programming. Qwest says they are happy to pay fees – but they won’t discuss build out. (Local folks should give Qwest their franchises because it seems that Qwest really wants to be denied so that they can report that denial to the legislators.)
Question: What can business organizations do to ensure that we have the telecommunications we need to be global competition?
RB: Eagan is tech savvy with 2000 home-based businesses. One hard thing for Chambers is that their members include telecommunications providers. Chambers can/should ask members/businesses – what do you need? And work to get those needs met.
Pushing the dialog is a good first step.
Question: Cities are looking at municipal networks. Do cities need to include rural areas?
DA: I’ve been working on this for 12 years (with MRNet & IRRRB) to get infrastructure and it’s been interesting to watch the field. Cherry picking providers make it difficult to serve everyone. It makes it harder for other providers to come in when the anchor tenants get service from someone else.
Rebuttals:
JJ: We need to look at the video bill from a few years ago – in terms of the statewide cable franchising. Also DA is right – we need to provide whole communities.
JL: Our community just finished a task force. Traditionally communities think of taxpayers are their communities – not including rural areas. Maybe county organizations can help fill the gap.
DP: Legislators should get information from progressive companies to get ideas that are outside the box.
RB: We need stakeholder meetings with broad range of perspectives. It is hard but good.
AJ: The legislature is looking to move forward. We need to stay out of the way of providers. No one is right on everything. The lack of investment is hurting us.
Questions from audience
Jim Farstad: We suffer the aftermath of previous regulation. We have fiber in the cities but we can’t use it. We need new investment. We should promote entrepreneurs. Need to protect everyone’s long term investment.
David Russel: Marketing is critical. Providers need a relationship with EDA et al.
Alex Weego: Todd County had 11 phone districts; 9 phone companies. How can we bring this group together?
Bruce Pomerantz: Libraries & schools do get some money (state & local). Social services need to come to meetings like this. We need service too.
Eric Lampland: I was recently at the RTC. McDonough Telephone of IL is building FTTP in a community with 2 customers per mile.
Aaron Berland: I’m frustrated with broadband. I am a wedding photographer and I don’t have the broadband I need to run my business. Real broadband. Who is going to own the Internet?
AJ: We need broadband for upload AND download and it’s important to recognize the difference.
Dick Nordvold: We need to define broadband. We need 45 Mbit and higher.
RB: 1 Gigbit is coming out of the GIG group efforts.
JL: City of Lakefield is third tier suburb. I’d like to work with JJ to get broadband.
DA: From the county perspective – we need to plan for pandemic events at local level. How do we get our workers to work from home and the infrastructure isn’t there.
Pavvo Pyykkonen: Subsidies can help fund high cost areas. Co-ops need to serve everyone but the only way to do it is to get those
DP: Yes we need to provide real broadband. The minimum we provide is 15Mbit – most folks don’t take that yet. We need to stretch fiber out to more areas. To get upload speeds cable and DSL won’t work. Providers need to listen to every customer – and that is best done by the local provider.
Geoff Daily: I support FTTH and big broadband. We can’t get too focused on deployment and forget about applications. We need what broadband allows – not just broadband.
Thanks ann for this it half shows me the directions thoughts are going .I would have loved to have been to this conference but im actually seeing what i need to see in your blogging and james farstad made a good point also .I will look forward to more info.
By: jamie on November 8, 2007
at 4:24 am
Thanks Jamie. I’m going to try cover the events today too. I may need to recruit some co-bloggers to catch some of the break outs.
By: Ann Treacy on November 8, 2007
at 1:36 pm
I talked to james farstad today on the phone ,we are going to try and work together on projects whether it be in the state or world wide.
By: jamie on November 8, 2007
at 6:03 pm
That’s fun news – thanks for letting us know!
By: Ann Treacy on November 8, 2007
at 7:28 pm
here is a write up from a friend which was pasted on a website today which i think u may find interesting
Google’s Android and WiMax, Users Win
PeteI
Video anytime, anywhere, got a major shot in the arm within the last week, with the Google announcement about Android, a new open platform for mobile devices. Developments behind Android are being spearheaded by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of over 30 well known companies including Intel, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sprint and LG among others. There are still open issues with how the Open Handset Alliance operates in conjunction with Google and the precise role each company will play with respect to Android is still not fully clear. To consumers an open standard for mobile handsets is what will deliver on the dream of anytime, anywhere communications.
If one takes a closer look we find that many of the companies that support WiMax also seem to be supporting this push for an open handset standard. It shouldn’t come as a surprise with the major benefits that WiMax brings to users. With the increase in both connection speeds and mobile reach, the end user will be a big winner. Eliminating the walls that traditional carriers have put up has been the desire of users for some time now, but without the marketing and financial clout of someone like Google we the user were stuck without a good choice. What some seem to be missing is by opening this mobile handset standard, when combined with the deployment of WiMax, users and software developers will finally be able to fully leverage the reach of the web. This new openness would allow mobile handsets to function more like PCs. We the user would have the ability to download and customize our handsets in ways that were previously impossible. Just as WiMAX has a goal to make mobile connectivity meet the standards of connectivity one would experience on a home or office computer, Android aims to provide freedoms that previously did not translate over from PC to mobile device. It certainly appears that this set of well known companies have a common goal in mind, enhancing the user experience on the mobile web.
Back on March 2nt I wrote a blog that discussed the benefits of Wireless Collaborative Video anytime, Anywhere. I have reposted that blog below. With the combination of Android and WiMax, the deployment of applications like the ones described below become a true reality
Imagine having to rebuild and maintain forty electric power substations in Iraq with insurgents determined to stop you at any cost. For security reasons the engineering experts are reluctant to travel to these substations in order to do routine maintenance and installation. Today project engineers can manage a project of this magnitude remotely. Using a wireless laptop at one end and a wireless PDA at the remote site allowing the expert to direct the work being done at the remote site. The expert can visually communicate in real time with the lower skilled local labor at the substations. The expert has complete control of the camera, frame rate and window size of the video feed, including a 10-1 zoom capability.
Imagine a traffic accident with a seriously injured individual in need of critical care and the paramedic has the capability to visually collaborate with the ER doctor before the injured individual is put in the ambulance. The ER doctor has full visual access to the injured person, can view and zoom on the injuries, has access to real time vital signs and is consulting with the paramedic on what steps might be taken to help save a life at the scene.
Police, fire, emergency medical, and other first responder applications can utilize these new video collaboration applications for any number of critical field situations while conferring with centralized experts for immediate assistance. These applications are deployable today because of the growth of broadband IP networks, followed by the explosion of WiFi hot spots.
Video conferencing is trending perhaps away from the sole arena of the boardroom toward ubiquity associated with the desktop, wireless laptop and even the PDA. This trend will undoubtedly continue to the point where, at some point, we all use it and take it for granted in our daily routine. It is also trending towards integration with broader collaboration applications, such that video conferencing becomes more than “talking heads”. Collaboration has been an explosive market in general and is now poised to be taken to a much higher plane through the addition of video-rich functionality. Infrastructure support for video conferencing is extending to include wireless, wearable, mobile components to facilitate “anywhere, anytime” collaborative experiences. Current trends also support higher quality experiences for lower bandwidth and lower associated service costs. At the same time, the services that provide these experiences are trending towards implementation using secure virtual networks that use specialized tunnels to penetrate through such corporate adoption obstacles like firewalls.
As simple video conferencing as a concept gives way to more interactive video collaborative experiences, the users will be able to share and solve problems remotely much more effectively than previously possible. Products that support live, real-time video collaboration seamlessly intermixed with remotely controlled review of recorded media will enable new paradigms of teamwork. An expert in one part of the country will be much more effective by helping someone in a remote location when he can see first-hand details of the problem “live” while talking to the person being served, with perhaps simultaneous reference to data recorded earlier at the site. Sessions such as this will be able to be archived and transmitted to other experts, therefore enabling quick access to additional help. Teamwork is therefore made much more effective with these more remote collaboration solutions.
The real goal is to make real-time video collaboration both as easy to use and as ubiquitous as a cell phone. Technologies need to be applied to collapse distance and time barriers that transcend the roadblocks inadvertently constructed by the IT infrastructures in place today. These infrastructures prevent many effective communication venues in their implementation of policies to control bandwidth and security. Eliminating the single largest obstacle impacting greater adoption is the issue of firewall traversal. As has been shown over and over again, IT departments are allergic to the notion of manipulating their network infrastructure to accommodate new applications and tools. Addressing that problem by incorporating a secure tunneling mechanism that obsolete the need for IT personnel to get involved in the deployment will make adoption much easier. As the ubiquity associated with collaboration tools achieves the success of the cell phone, the mobile workforce will enjoy an effectiveness that eliminates its disadvantages.
By: jamie on November 9, 2007
at 3:16 pm