In the last 24 hours I’ve had two great conversations with Christopher Mitchell of Institute for Local Self Reliance. So this is a long post but in short, I talk about

1. The great news in Vermont (the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network) is moving ahead.
2. The Broadband service mapping project and inventory funding provided, and money appropriated in the Minnesota Legislature.
3. California’s mapping strategy

Vermont

Last night we typed (more than talked) about the good news in Vermont. In Vermont, 22 towns have voted to join the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. Tim Nulty (a speaker from the Blandin Broadband conference last fall) is leading the effort. He was instrumental in Burlington’s networks. (You can find a nice story on Nulty on Vermont Public Radio.)

I’m going to take the liberty of quoting Christopher form the article above:

“These towns have made the right decision,” said Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at ILSR. “Small towns across the United States have suffered from under-investment in telecommunications and these communities realized they can solve their broadband problems with smart public investments.”

I think what both Christopher and I really like about the Vermont model (again to take liberties) is the potential for the public-private partnership. A fiber network requires a lot of investment – and the return on investment is not necessarily fast. Also, because of the economic potential inherent in a fiber network the return on investment will ripple beyond the original investors.

So it makes sense to get public entities involved. They can ride out the slower return on investment and they will benefit from the ripple effect of the investment.

Minnesota Legislature

Christopher went to the Legislative Committee meeting this morning. (Big thanks!) I can’t find the archive online yet – but I thought I’d relay what I did find and Christopher’s notes.

The quick note was that the meeting wasn’t terribly excited. They needed to bump everything from the sub-committee today and they did, including the Broadband service mapping project and inventory funding provided, and money appropriated. Not much changed from the draft bill except apparently that they appropriated $175,000 to do the mapping. (I blogged about the proposed bill earlier and included the draft itself.)

The Senate is going to look at this bill on Thursday but the decision from the House is to move ahead. This is a little disheartening because there is some skepticism about how useful this information will be. First, apparently it will take a year – which means another year without really forward with a broadband plan. Second, it sounds as if they’ll get the data from the providers and I’m not sure that the providers are prepared to share that info. (I don’t think they want to share it, I don’t think they necessarily have it to share, and I think that info will be out of date before it’s printed.) I think another good point was raised in the Senate – why are we going to pay outside people to do the study? We have loads of good MN folks who could do it.

I’m not against a map – but I think Bill Coleman said it well when he pointed out that, “Those of us who have been working in rural broadband development for some time would be able to produce a map of broadband coverage with pretty good accuracy.”

I think that could be done in less time and for less money than has been budgeted. We could use the remainder to get thinking about how to get on board with a program like they have in Vermont.

If we are going to do mapping Christopher sent me some links on the progress that California has made.

I’ll paste just 2 paragraphs of the report below:

As policymakers determine whether and where to direct scarce resources, it is critical for them to have access to current broadband deployment information. The data underlying these maps is the result of a project undertaken by the CBTF to map broadband availability throughout California. Through the California Emerging Technology Fund, broadband providers voluntarily submitted availability data to a neutral third party. The Office of State Health Planning and Development, acting as staff to the CBTF, created these maps using an aggregated dataset gathered by the third party.

To determine broadband availability by speed in California, the CBTF embarked on a major research effort to gather current availability and speed information in the state. The availability and speed maps presented here are the result of over 22 million supplied addresses or address equivalents. Calit2 researchers, on behalf of the CBTF, also analyzed over 1.2 million speed tests, providing critical information about speed availability and subscription in the state. Finally, the CBTF assessed recent broadband adoption and computer ownership data for California and surveyed advertised prices at various speed points across the state. The results of this effort provide a comprehensive view of availability and adoption in California.

As I recall, California’s plans include an emphasis on getting providers to work together – both my collaborating, creating standards and sharing information. So the maps seem to make more sense in that context. If they can promote collaboration and standards that would be great – especially if that included collaboration with new entrants into the field – but again I remain skeptical.