Call our for community broadband stories

Dear Blandin Broadband Colleagues,

We write to you today on a mission. We’re in the midst of finalizing the development of an exciting new Broadband Toolkit. It’s going to be a website that features over 100 applications across categories like Healthcare, Education, Government, Business, and Consumer. It will serve as a resource for communities that want to make the most of broadband and take advantage of all the 21st century has to offer.

Included alongside the applications listings will be links to articles describing broadband in action, providing both case studies and best practices on how to use these applications.

That’s where you come in. We want to use this Toolkit as an opportunity to showcase the many great things happening in Minnesota communities through the use of broadband.

So we’re putting a call out to everyone in Minnesota to send us links to stories written about great things happening in your community through broadband.

They can be stories written in your local newspaper, in a regional magazine, in a journal or study, even blog entries and press releases. Basically anything and everything that highlights broadband in action in Minnesota.

By doing this you can help your community’s efforts to receive national recognition as while the Broadband Toolkit is first and foremost a resource for Minnesota, we expect it to draw attention from communities across the country. Already a number of nationwide organizations have expressed interest in sharing the Toolkit with their constituents once it launches.

So don’t miss out on the opportunity to have your hard work recognized.

In fact, if you know of a great story that hasn’t been written yet, send along information about that as well and we can work with you to get a story written.

Email your links to
broadband@blandinfoundation.org.

Now is the time we stand up together to shout from the rooftops that broadband is great and through it we can change the world. So join in, help out, and send us all your have about the impact of broadband in your community!

To insure that your story makes it into the Toolkit, be sure to respond to this email by June 18th. Later submissions may be accepted but in order to get into the launch version of the site it’s important to get back to us ASAP.

Sincerely,

The Blandin Broadband Team

KFAI Show on Broadband

A couple of Blandin on Broadband friends were on KFAI today to talk about broadband issues especially in Minnesota – or maybe for Minnesotans.

Christopher Mitchell from ILSR
Eric Lampland from Lookout Point
Peter Fleck
from Digital Inclusion Funds and Extension Services

I took some super quick notes – but you can listen to the archive online, which is even better.

Promoting municipally owned networks. Folks who own the network make the rules to a great extent. In light of that maybe Minneapolis should have built itself. If they had gone with Earthlink (which was a contender for the network built by US Internet) they could be in trouble today. Earthlink is dropping citywide networks. There was a fun call from someone in DC who works with networks on a national basis.

Promoting wired over wireless because of the greater bandwidth available. Aerial fiber is a good way to go – in Vermont they are going with aerial fiber. Fiber is cheaper and more available in other countries and we’re getting left in the dust.

Focusing on economic development makes a lot of sense. Broadband is akin to the highway or the phone in that way.

Need symmetrical access. Increasingly people need to upload info as much or as often as they need to download info. There is a discrepancy in the service available – often residential connections are asymmetrical.

We also need to look at not just improving existing connections but getting more people online and if we can get communities to take on that goal that would be a start. Minneapolis started down this road with their wireless and getting new people connected was a big goal. Through Digital Inclusion Fund they are giving out money to help bridge the gap.