Big crowd at the Task Force meeting today. Loads of people joining via phone. I have not seen so many suits since I quit working at law libraries.

I have included my notes, such as they are. Please forgive any typos. Thanks to the Task Force for sharing the PPT presentations.

I usually try not to give too much of my opinion, but… I think it was great for so many providers to come in to talk. But I think it might have been more helpful to give each 90 seconds to speak and then let the board ask questions. I think that would have helped get beyond the party lines for each business and into more heated issues.

Here are the notes…

Minutes approved from last week.

Public comments

Mike Riordan – City of St Paul representing Jim Miller & Ann Higgins from League of MN Cities ask that the Cities be able to make a presentation to the Task Force.

Minnesota Association of Townships had same request. Sounds like they contacted Rick King.

Provider Forum

TELCO PANEL

Where Are We Now? A Small Telco Perspective (Brent Christensen)

Frontier of MN High Spees Capability – Mike Flynn

Covers 1632 exchanges in MN – representing the medium side telco
(Some folks are still OK with dialup despite having access to more – not many, but some.)

John Stanoch – Qwest

They brought connectivity to the RNC

They were the baby Baby Belle
4,000 employees (Union shop)
In 14 states (states west of MN)
Full product portfolio – partnership with Direct TV and entering partnership with Verizon for wireless

Recent deployments in MN
Improving network with $200 million since 2001 in MN – expanding DSL services into lots of offices and expanding remote terminals
Focusing on fiber to the node in MN in last 2 years
Physical plan is in good shape so they through fiber to the node would be the most cost effective deployment. Provide speeds up to 20M – that means 3-4 high speed uses per home (HDTV, gaming…)

Land line is on decline but there is growth in high speed Internet.

Watching business build through their kids. Kids don’t want all of Direct TV – just maybe ESPN for example.

The Task Force should focus on market development. There are more folsk on dialup in MN than other states served.

Qwest have asked for changes in fed rules related to USF. USF means everyone gets a phone. It has already provided computer in school. That needs to be expanded/transferred to provide broadband service.

QUESTIONS

If you wanted to create a playbook for your arch enemy state, what would you include to make sure that broadband use and deployment did not increase?

Christensen’s – focus on only one side of the equation.

Qwest – avoid communication. Don’t ask what the needs are. Don’t look at private public partners – and don’t provide grants. Duplicate services and waste money.

In MN we don’t talk enough. The providers are the last people to know that the school can’t get connected or that business X didn’t move to the area because of poor connectivity.

Frontier – people want to provide service in front of the need – but just in front of need and that can be location based. Investment has to pay off.

Question – don’t replicate services – then why are there so many closed networks? Don’t open networks make sense?

Qwest – we should have open networks. Qwest does have to make their connection open in some ways. Qwest doesn’t have unlimited access to funds. So we go to densely populated areas so you can recoup costs and expand forward.

Open Networks will destroy business because then businesses can’t recoup costs.

Question – If customers want something else – we can do it. What does that mean?

Frontier – We can build where needed. ED teams ask for the build it and we can get businesses to relocate – but that’s different than a customer calling for an upgrade.

CABLE PANEL

Dick Sjoberg – Thief River Falls

Sjoberg operated in NW corner of MN
Serve 33 towns – with customer-based ranging from21-3500 customers per town

1998 – starting with cable modems. It was state of the art. Now up to 11M.
880 Megabits of traffic per home daily. If someone wants higher speeds we can do that.
We have customers on fiber 40G
1550 fiber miles and are moving to fiber.
Where we do FTTH we get about 80 percent penetration.

Connectivity isn’t the biggest problems. Costs of computers/equipment is a stopper issue for subscriber use too.

Bill Jensen – Mediacom

Mediacom just took over 3 municipal cable networks because they couldn’t afford the equipment to upgrde.
There’s a ton of broadband in Minnesota. We compete with lots of folks.

Tucker Carlson – Charter Communications

The high end user is becoming a drain on the network. Good analogy to broadband as a river and the more junk high end users dump into the river the slower it flows.

David Diers – Comcast

[Ann’s note: I foudn this helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS]

QUESTIONS

What would it take to open your network (unfettered) to other proiders?

Charter – They do it now. But they have to pay for it.

Mediacom – VoIP does it now too. They work with HickoryTech and Inventus. They lease connectivity.

Question – Would you provide access to residential providers?

Yes. But they won’t give a list of customers. Also those providers can’t be residential users; they have to upgrade their connection to a business account.

Question – what’s the scope for DOCSIS 4.0?

Preliminary talk indicates 996M to premise – so pretty much Gig service symmetrical.

WIRELESS

Don Brittingham – Verizon

Verizon is making a push towards integrating to 4G, which also will help merge protocols (I may have mis-said that but years ago you could go in a couple direction for wireless and providers went into different directions and now they will be meeting up again.)

Anthony Will – Broadband Corp

Representing fixed wireless solutions – mostly meeting the needs of people outside of the Twin Cities
They’re excited about the new white spaces opening up
They plan up to 2M
They’ll be deploying WiMAX – it competes with LTE

They’re biggest problem is limited resources
550Mhz with an unlicensed band

Get backbone through Charter and provide service through that. Some backhauls are able to do a Gig. (A Gig is also possible in Pt2Pt.)

There are other provider and we’re independent companies.

They work without loans and they’re making a business of it
The government needs to stay out of it to keep us going.

QUESTIONS

Frontier services the Iron Range. There are lots of holes on the wireless map in that area. Will Verizon be getting into these areas?

Verizon – 700 Mhz is a better channel so we expect that we’ll be able to fill in some of these spaces – but not all.

Verizon has to deal with local governments too – which is an issue.

Verizon would also like for the government to not over regulate. Flexibility in regulation has been a help to the wireless industry.

Question – There are communities that need broadband. Cable maps indicate coverage but there’s a huge area not served. What would it take to provide coverage to all areas at an affordable price?

Verizon – Don’t try to predict what the marketplace will do and don’t try to fix it that way. Let the marketplace lead the efforts. Let people compete with each other. For areas that won’t get served that way – may need to consider incentives (tax credits?) but they shouldn’t be handcuffs.

Cable – Wired and wireless services will create the solution. There aren’t lots of spaces without services – the maps show lakes and reservations where no one lives. But we have areas not served by wires and that’s OK so long as wireless can come in. WiMAX at 15M is going to be a great tools for remote areas.

Broadband Corp – there’s a right tool for the right problem. There’s no way to get FTTH to every home. But we have an arsenal of tools to provide a level of service.

Question – is there enough incentive out there to get rural MN covered? Why hasn’t it happened already?

Broadband Corp  – It’s all about ROI. Unlicensed equipment has come down in price. Right now equipment is $350 per customer; last year it was $450; before then it didn’t exist. Next year the prices should go down.

As equipment gets cheaper and better the coverage spreads.

There just aren’t big spaces that aren’t covered. The big holes are in the boundary waters (BWCA).

Qwest – the other issue is the high cost to serve. MN is behind in this area. That’s why we’re interested in USF. If there’s no ROI – then it’s tough to invest. We need to be focused on where the gaps exist.

Cable – we need to look at services and focus on how to create the solution. We’ll find that some infrastructure doesn’t exist in (doesn’t make sense) in some areas.

Frontier – there are pockets. But we need to step back at the wider view. Towns need broadband and cell service. No business is going to an area without cell coverage. The Free Press just reported about $44 billion for USF.

Sjoberg – The discussion of gaps could be shelved until the maps are finished.

LUNCH

Understanding International Broadband Comparisons – Scott Wallsten, Technology Policy Institute

OECD discussion – the ranking is meaningless
One issue – they combine business lines but divide by households
Household penetration count by indicates that the US ranks 9.
FCC doesn’t/can’t count business lines.
Stats track households not individuals so the results get skewed based on how many people live in each home.
So even when every household has Internet access the US will rank lower on per capita chart due to high average of people per household.

Speeds – do you go on advertized speeds or actual speeds?
US ranks about 7th on one chart; 8th on another
People around the world are not willing to pay a lot of fast speeds right now.
Providers in Korea will advertise the number of subscribers they have at each tier of service.

If you want to promote use, focus on rural areas.

Conclusions:
There isn’t a crisis. We’re not the best but we’re not the worst. We have time to create good policy.
Ask census to continue to get BB data.
Get better data on business data.
Do we really need maps? Does that encourage collusion? Don’t you need to update it constantly?
Do a cost benefit analysis.
There are a lot of programs out there to promote BB. Learn from them.

Tough conclusions
Remove entry barriers – open up spectrum, improve rights of way issues.
INCRASE ADOPTION: Focus more on low-income people than rural areas.
INCREASE BB INVESTMENT: do not subsidize new investment – do reserve auction like Virginia did

QUESTIONS

All charts are based on adoption.

Question – is there are recommendation to improve data collection?

There was a bill (BB data improvement). Most data is based on mapping, which isn’t all that helpful.

Question – How would you recommend we collect data?

Piggyback on existing data collection methods. Maybe there’s a public health survey. Any way to get into the homes. Want to know how doesn’t have BB and why.

Question – Focus on lower income because of density? And how?

Yes – it tends to be a cost issue. Think of a USF type program that offers computers to lower income homes.

Question – what do other countries pay for service?

It’s tough to figure it out. You have to look at cost versus advertized speed and that’s not right. There isn’t really a good way to compare services.

Question – you said don’t worry. Do you think the market will take care of adoption?

Overall the market will take care of it. But there will be people left out. That’s where government should focus. Need to target market failures.

Question – This discussion probably happened with the highways.

Not so much. NO private company was building the highway. The government has so many other roles – universal health care, fixing roads.

Question – Do you have a view on high end users who are a drain the network?

BB is a Multisided market, it’s a platform that leads people to applications. It’s hard to know how to prices. People may need to consider new pricing schemes. Changing by time doesn’t make sense. But some people do so little – it seems that there ought to be a pre-paid phone sort of solution for them. And then there’s BitTorrent users.

We know when we have an all you can eat model – people eat too much.

Question – have providers thought about new pricing models?

Qwest – has contacted people to offer a business solution. And that has worked well.

Within the next 10 years we’re going to see some changes. Long distance has changed. Land lines have changes – the industry needs to change too.

ON TO THE REPORT

Here’s an outline:

Exec Summary
Chapters:
Statement of values
Where we’re been
Where are today
Where we want to be
How are we going to get there
Define Broadband by functionality
Comprehensive Policy Recommendations

How should we handle any minority reports?

FEEDBACK

There’s a role for distinguishing residential and business when we look at defining BB by function. Maybe a recommendation for future studies. Maybe in the Where we want to be section.

It sounds like availability is not the issue and if so much of this can be handled by the market. The economic situation has changes. There probably won’t be money for this. Maybe we need to find other programs to hop onto.

It seems as if BB access isn’t an issue.
There’s a mixed view – when we hear from people on the demand side we may hear another story. There are 2 sides to every story.

We are in a position where the state needs to take on more issues so BB falls down the priority list. But on a national level BB is a bigger issue now – maybe we can take advantage of that opportunity.

We need to be open to a more robust section on the difference between business and residential issues. One of the big issues for providers is business wanting business services for residential prices.

One issue might be lack of awareness for BB access. Having an educational component or public service announcement to inform the public of access is a role the board could take.

What is the access definition? Do people need access in their homes, in their communities, on their person? What’s the speed of access?

Some of these questions will be addressed in future meetings.

Everyone liked the framework.

Blandin brought a forestry report to the task force. It’s short and sweet and only talks about recommendations. To create a quick look like that, the task force plans to condense – probably twice to meet the different needs of potential readers.

HISTORY OF BB IN MN

The history team has created a Wiki (www.urbanusers.com/wiki) to track big events and reports in Minnesota related to the Internet. They will be condensing them to help form the Where We Have Been section of the big report.

Mostly folks seem to like how this is presented. They would like to include a timeline.

Tracts of history include:

State milestones
Tech catalysts
National drivers
In-state BB initiatives
Municipal Initiatives
Backbone networks

Might consider regulatory environment. (May want to add that Where are We Today chapter too)
Might consider provider initiatives although it might fit in the technology catalyst section.

Why not post the whole report online? Just plan to print the summary and recommendation?

MORE QUESTIONS

Can a committee think about getting a panel of municipal-type folks to talk in February?

Can we get a group of high tech folks to talk too? MN used to be a high tech hub – not it isn’t.

Can we hear from end users and business about their needs? Could roll that in with the high tech users?

Rey Ramson(?) working on bringing BB to low income areas. He might be a good person. (from Growing Economy?)

Locations for Greater MN:
Mankato
Fergus Falls
Grand Rapids

Blandin was listed as a possible help as was the League of MN Cities, and Association of Townships.

VIDEOCONFERENCING FOR NEXT MEETING

Video conferencing – would it be possible to use MNSCU links to meet? They stepped up to help for the January meeting. Metro State would be a location in St Paul – with links to other locations around the state. They mentioned a few places but suggested that others might be possible.

An added benefit would be streaming to folks at home. Also people in rural areas could participate more easily.

So the plan is to move ahead with the locations named, to hold off on adding extra locations and give it a go.

February
Value Statements from members
Summary of other State Reports
K12 schools and libraries
Municipal/County perspective

March
Healthcare
CWA Study
Gates Foundation Report (maybe)
Economic Development (maybe)

April
There will be a move to more discussion and work and fewer presentations

Legal opinion on working online – we can meet anywhere that’s accessible. Otherwise technology still isn’t allowed as recommended in the first meetings.

Blandin Conference – 4 members spoke and 2 were in the audience. They got a lot of input on what was important. The theme was that they were underserved and needed funding. We said that getting service was a goal of the task force. We need to be in synch with providers. Promoted public-private partnerships.

People were glad the task force was there.

The group is doing a good job but we’re going to need to think about the task ahead. The hard work is about to start and we may need to meet more often.

http://www.noradsanta.org/– a fun seasonal broadband site, powered by Qwest