Monthly Archives: May 2010

Broadband in the Marshall Schools

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In the third part of her series on broadband in Southwest Minnesota, Deb Gau at the Marshall Independent focuses on broadband in the schools. It starts with a nice quote on the benefit of broadband in education – especially for rural schools…

“What it’s starting to create for us is a way to bridge the gap we’ve always had between rural schools and schools in the Twin Cities,” said Josh Sumption, information technology manager at the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative. By coming together online, students and teachers can get access to resources a single school district wouldn’t be able to afford.

She also includes some great examples of how broadband is used in the school today…

Member schools use the network for a wide variety of purposes. For example, some schools including Marshall High School now offer online classes – about 156 students in the region participated in online classes this year, Sumption said. An American Sign Language teacher based out of Beaver Creek can reach students across southwest Minnesota through interactive video. At Pipestone Area Schools, there are interactive whiteboards in every classroom thanks to a special technology levy passed by voters in 2006.

And with new applications popping up daily, the possibilities are endless. She mentions the SmartBoard, which if you haven’t seen is like a chalkboard-iPhone hybrid. I often hear people say – what would we do with 100 Mbps? The schools have the answers. According to the article, the schools are currently at 68 Mbps – and maxing out during school hours. I think it’s great – but I also think it’s a sign that the workforce of tomorrow is used to some great gadgets and serious bandwidth. I think it would be wise for those of us on the work-world would try to raise to those standards rather than home the young workers skills are compatible with older technologies.

MIRC update and great connections from TISP

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Earlier this week, we presented an update on the MIRC project for TISP Forum. (As you may recall we spoke optimistically about the plan for TISP last October when we were still at “applicant” status.) This time around “we” included me, Bill Coleman and several MIRC partners: Dick Senese and Joyce Hoelting from Extension, Casey Sorenson from PCs for People, Gary Langer from Minnesota Learning Commons, and Jeannie Spaulding from Kandiyohi County.

We’ve posted our slides below – but as is often the case, we seemed to learn as much as the attendees, both during and after the session. I was so pleased with everyone’s generosity in sharing their stories and expertise.

I’ll try to share some of their stories below too.

Notes from After the Session

After the Forum, a group of us headed for a post presentation pint and conversation to further explore opportunities for collaboration with MIRC communities. Steven Renderos of Main Street Project joined us. We originally met during our late March “MIRC Intro Tour,” and Steven was gracious enough to meet us to talk again.

Main Street Project describes itself as a “grassroots cultural organizing, media justice and economic development initiative working to help rural and urban communities face today’s realities with hope.” The project “provides creative and practical tools to give people of all ages, cultures, economic and immigration status the opportunity to more fully participate in all aspects of community life.”

Steven said that Main Street Project’s tools to work with communities, in both Spanish and English, include:

  • digital story telling
  • media justice
  • using social media tools to organize
  • internet education – policy and practice

Check out Main Street Project’s website for more information.

We also met with Nghi Huynh from Minnesota Multicultural Media Consortium (MMMC). Nhgi works with AHANA communities. (AHANA was a new term for me; Nghi explained that is stands for Afro-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American.)

Nghi’s MMMC colleague, Al McFarlane (also Editor-in-Chief of the Afro-American journal Insight News), talked about his interest in helping immigrant communities claim a “respect” for their culture as bringing value and an enhanced quality of life to their adopted communities. Al, who grew up in Worthington, said he wants to connect with Afro-Americans living in rural places. “We want to create a public mind,” he said, “that celebrates our culture.” In addition to editing the journal, Al also hosts a weekly radio show at KFAI, an independent community radio station that offices at Cedar-Riverside.

We learned that one MMMC partner, the Asian Community Technology Center, offers media literacy training and on-line resources for the AHANA community. Nhgi said that if invited, MMMC would welcome opportunities to bring their work to MIRC communities. MMMC is also the public awareness and outreach partner for the University of Minnesota ‘s BTOP grant in support of sustained broadband adoption in 11 public computer centers in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul. They will be translating and adapting into AHANA languages online curriculum on digital literacy and other internet use topics.

So you can see why we left more energized after talking with folks. It’s been so great to see the opportunities that have arisen even at the early stages. We’ll try to keep you updated as the project progresses.

Broadband the newest beat for Insight News

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When we started Blandin on Broadband a few years ago I spent a lot of time beating the bushes for anything related to broadband. I was lucky if I could find a dozen or so legitimately broadband-focused stories a month. Well, that has certainly changed. Now there are single days when I could report on a dozen broadband stories. I’ve noted this to myself often – but today I saw evidence that it’s not just that I’m looking for broadband in all the right places.

This week Insight News introduced their latest hire…

Ivan B. Phifer this week joins McFarlane Media as a technology reporter supporting efforts to expand broadband awareness and utilization in communities of color. Phifer’s work will appear in newspapers serving African and African American, Latino, Asian and American Indian communities.

The newspapers are members of Minnesota Multicultural Media Consortium, which, in partnership with University of Minnesota’s innovative Urban Research and Outreach Engagement Center (UROC), and the U’s Office for Business and Community Economic Development, have created a network of community public computer centers (PCC) that provide jobs, training and access to high speed internet technology.

I happened upon the article while looking at Bernadine Joselyn’s notes from the TISP meeting earlier this week. (Those notes will appear on this blog later today.) I think it’s exciting that they’ve hired someone to focus on broadband. I look forward to reading future stories. Heck, maybe we can even share notes.

Broadband options around Marshall

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For the second in her Broadband series, Deb Rau from the Marshall Independent focused on broadband options available in the area. Cable (first in the form of Prairiewave, now Knology) has been a big players in towns such as Tracy.

I love the look back in her article…

“Before that [cable], there was dial-up. It was 56 kilobits per second, if you could get it,” said David Spencer, finance director for the city of Tracy, and a local resident. Getting a telecommunications hookup in town was “very big, not just for the Internet, but for telephones and cable television too.”

Remember when you had to convince an Internet service provider to bring dialup to your area? I was one of the people you called if you wanted MRNet to come to your town. I remember getting the calls and I remember visiting areas where the Internet was a long distance phone call. It wasn’t that long ago.

The article recognizes the expense of bringing infrastructure to rural areas where the population density is lower, which means fewer customers per mile, which in turn means you have to cover more miles. But that being said, local providers in the area have talked about customer base tripling in the last 5 years.

Cable isn’t the only option, wireless is mentioned too…

Some groups have opted to pursue alternatives to cable-based Internet in southwest Minnesota, however. About four years ago, the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative invested in a system of microwave wireless towers to provide high-speed Internet to a total of 31 school districts in the region. Minnesota Valley Television also uses a wireless network to bring Internet service to rural areas.

The MVTV wireless network was another good option for Tracy.

MVTV received ARRA funding so their area is about to expand. They weren’t the only providers in Southwest Minnesota to receive funding. The Southwest Minnesota Broadband Group has received moved to deploy fiber – but maybe I’m getting ahead of the Marshall series on broadband.

Broadband at the Ground Level

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Yesterday Dave Peters at Minnesota Public Radio posted a great article on broadband in Minnesota. It’s a nice overview of what’s going on in the state – starting with the statewide broadband bill and going down to talking about what a couple of specific communities are doing to boost broadband in their areas.

Dave writes about rural issues so I wasn’t surprised but I was impressed to see his assessment of leadership (at the Ground Level)…

So how one community addresses this question is likely to differ, and need to differ, from how the next one does. I can’t think of another public policy issue or social trend — from energy to food networks to housing to demographic change — in which the leadership in specific communities will make as much difference in the quality-of-life outcome.

It’s going to be illuminating to see how local leadership emerges and what kind of information sharing gets fostered. It’s a great opportunity to see, as the Bush Foundation likes to call it, “courageous leadership.”

It’s a perspective that can often get lost but rural is a series of different communities. There are some shared characteristics – but each is different and each will address their questions differently. In some ways that’s what makes the broadband situation in the US different that in other countries. As Dave points out we don’t have a statewide strategy. The National strategy is being developed but the plan at that level seems to be stocking the magazine of weapons – not creating the game plan for each community. So it’s an opportunity for local communities to shine.

New Connect Minnesota Maps Webinar

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The Connect Minnesota folks gave a quick and easy tutorial to their new maps last Friday via webinar. I took some notes – but I want to start by mentioning that the interactive maps are pretty easy to use. I used to run into issues with my own broadband when accessing the older maps – but that’s wasn’t a problem. (According to my most recent speed test I have 3.5 Mbps down and 184 Kbps up – however I am located in Ireland so I have that disadvantage.) So here are my quick notes…

They have new static maps to download.

You can see layers of types of service ( you can flag one or many):

  • Cable
  • Mobile
  • Fiber
  • DSL
  • Fixed wireless
  • Unserved

There is a function that allows you to zoom in quickly and easily with a specific address. It will then tell you the coverage in that area and providers, including contact information.

A little bit info on unserved layers. It is based on information from providers. You could see a lot of areas in NE Minnesota that aren’t served. Now you can dig down into census tract info. This would be (would have been) helpful for the ARRA grant applications.

Also they will be tracking adoption info such as computer ownership. There is an analysis function that will allow folks to overlay their own datasets. (Well maybe not their own – but they mentioned datasets.)

In Tennessee this has been helpful in talking with providers because they have been able to talk about many households are in a given area, which has helped to make a business case to go into an area. It was pretty cool to see how the visuals could really help decision makers. Like Google Maps, you really get a feel for the characteristics and layout of a community – so a provider might be able to see that within areas with lower population density, there may be pockets of density. (Not such great news if you are really removed from neighbors.)

They are also adding RSS feeds that might help track activities in Minnesota. They used the Governor’s Office as an example – but I think adding an RSS feed from Cook County Broadband or Southwest Minnesota Buyers Group might be better examples.

Anyone with a broadband project underway or a local story to share can send Connect Minnesota the details to be added to the RSS Feed via the maps@connectmn.org email address. You will need to provide any pertinent information including the name, address, and a url or website (if one is available.) Our mapping team will then plot the  coordinates so that it appears on the map at that location.

Additionally, that same email address can be used to submit comments and feedback about the maps. If an error is found, they encourage users to notify them and they will work to make the correction.

There were no questions.

You can get more details from the Connected Nation press release. I did happen upon a Star Tribune article mentioning the new maps – the readers of that article had plenty of questions. Some were on target; some completely off the mark. But they are always interesting to read.

Marshall celebrates broadband success

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This week the Marshall Independent started a series of “stories that looks at where Marshall and the area stands when it comes to broadband Internet service, where it could go in the future, and what that future holds for businesses and residents alike.”

Yesterday’s story starts with a definition of where they are today…

A survey of local Internet services shows seven different Internet providers in Marshall, several offering download speeds greater than one Megabit per second (Mbps). A recently-enacted Minnesota law calls for broadband download speeds of 10 Mbps by 2015.

… and looks at the concerted effort it took to get there…

The first steps toward better Internet service in the Marshall area were taken more than 10 years ago, said DeCramer and Marshall Community Services Director Harry Weilage. It took a lot of community education and teamwork to build network infrastructure when the Internet was just starting to gain prominence, they said.

And the efforts have paid off; the area around Marshall (think Windom) is one of the best wired areas in the state. It’s interesting to hear the historical perspective. They didn’t get fiber because they were lucky, they got it because they planned. No accident there. It will be fun to read the rest of the series.

What that did strike me was the impact of the Minnesota Broadband Bill on communities that are currently well poised to be broadband powerhouses – as seen in the first quote from the article. In the spirit of planning ahead – maybe focusing on the 10 Mbps in 2015 isn’t the right goal for them. I think that goal is better reserved for folks who have nothing now. The folks who are doing well should reach higher.

Over the weekend Mike Horwath from ipHouse sent me an article that puts our speed goals in perspective – the title says it all “US happy with 4Mbps baseline; Europe demands 30Mbps for all”. Maybe Marshall needs to follow the European standard – or shoot for the US premium plan of 100 million U.S. homes have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 Mbps and actual upload speeds of at least 50 Mbps by 2020. In some ways I do see Marshall doing just that. Southwest Minnesota received an ARRA grant to boost broadband and I know Marshall is slated for DOCSIS 3.0.

Maybe it’s a good time to take a page from Marshall’s history and go for it!

2010 Intelligent Community – Suwon, South Korea

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Suwon, South Korea was named the Intelligent Community of the Year last Friday. They won over the other six finalists, including some of my favorites – Dublin, Ohio; Tallinn, Estonia; and Eindhoven, Netherlands. Stockholm, Sweden was the 2009 Intelligent Community of the Year. Suwon is just 15 miles from Seoul. South Korea has now produced three of the last five Intelligent Community winners.

What I find most fascinating about this competition and these communities is how it reveals the culture of the participating communities and countries. “Happy Suwon” is the marketing tagline for the winning community. “Fast-fast” is their operating style. They get input from the people, make decisions, do things, measure results, move on. Always fast-fast. Eindhoven and Tallinn are fiercely strategic and highly encouraging of collaboration and innovation. The US communities seem more haphazard and free-flowing. In the European and Asian communities, there seems less conflict about the proper government role in moving a community forward. They seem to talk more about what should be done rather than to argue the proper approach to getting it done.

All of these communities put a strong emphasis on world class infrastructure – telecommunications, transportation, and education systems. They are working hard to put these in place and to make use of them to increase their economic competitiveness.

Unfunded MN ARRA Round One Applications

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A while back I started to wonder what if anything will come of the Round One unfunded ARRA applications. So I contacted everyone who had an unfunded project in Minnesota. My survey was hardly scientific or stringent but I thought it might be interesting to report in.

I found 93 unfunded projects. Of those, 27 were projects that centered only or primarily in Minnesota, a few covered a couple of states and the rest were primarily national projects. I heard back from almost a third of the folks I contacted. I asked just four question encouraging people to say as much or as little as they wanted:

  1. Was your application for an existing plan or project or did the ARRA funding spur you to create a plan?
  2. Did you apply for Round Two Funding?
  3. Do you currently have a plan for moving forward regardless of ARRA funding?

Here’s what I heard or found out:

Was your application for an existing plan or project or did the ARRA funding spur you to create a plan?

About a third of the folks who got back to me indicated that their projects would have been used to significantly expand or extend an existing project. For many people that expansion meant going into new areas. For a few folks it meant a chance to expedite long term plans – I think that was especially true for existing service providers.

Very few folks seems to developed a project out of the blue – but with the quick application turnaround and just the ominous nature of any federal application I think that makes sense.

Did you apply for Round Two Funding?

Almost 70 of the 93 applicants did not reapply. (I was able to check that with the online database of applications so there might be some false negatives if folks applied under a different name. I had checked into this a couple of weeks ago too to find out that there were fewer applicants and more money on the offer in Round Two. ) Some applicants felt that they no longer qualified – such as Hiawatha Broadband; they felt that some of the requirements conflicted with previously written contracts; others felt that their geographic location no longer qualified.

Many of the folks who reapplied pared down the scope of their projects. Either they included fewer states or fewer technologies. Recognizing that for many applicants the ARRA represented an opportunity for growth I think this paring down probably brought some folks closer to their pre-ARRA plans. For some folks that may have been a good call, for others it may be a lost (or slowed down) opportunity.

A few folks seemed to be less than pleased with the funding process. Someone alluded to spending 1500 hours on the applications; others just said straight out that they had experienced frustration. For other folks I think the ARRA funds were an opportunity to think big. I suspect that those who had worked with federal applications in the past may have had a different attitude going in.

Do you currently have a plan for moving forward regardless of ARRA funding?

The response rate on this question is even more nebulous than the previous questions. About 25 applicants reapplied for funding. About a dozen said they were definitely moving forward regardless, we’ve posted news on at least two in the last month: TTM and Keyon and seen other stories posted elsewhere.

Digital Inclusion, Libraries and Computer Centers: a bibliography

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Thanks to my Aunt Mary (Treacy) with the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information for sending me a great bibliography written by a colleague and friend, Mary Ann Van Cura ( a friend to me and broadband!). It is entitled Towards Digital Inclusion: The Role of Libraries and Other Community Technology Centers and it is available online (as are all of the resources). It’s a good general resource – but really focuses on Minnesota.

Mary Ann has included research and statistics but I think many readers will be most interested in the guides, toolkits and curriculum she has gathered from libraries and computer centers that have implemented digital literacy programs. It’s a great shortcut for anyone looking to do the same.

More ARRA broadband funds available from RUS

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Earlier this month the RUS (Rural Utility Service) announced a new broadband funding opportunity, a NOFA for Applications for Satellite, Rural Library Broadband, and Technical Assistance Projects.

John Schultz of U-reka Broadband attended the informational session held yesterday for more information and was kind enough to send his notes to me. John is involved with the (successfully ARRA-funded) Southwest Minnesota Broadband Group, he has worked Tribal communities and has several applications in the hopper for Round One. Perhaps his notes will help spur a few more applications from Minnesota… 

  •  
    • Eligibility-Indian Tribes (regardless if they were successful in BIP applications), Round one BIP winners and Second Round BIP winners. Therefore Second Round BIP applicants will not know if they are successful they are taking a chance on these applications.
    • $3 million budget for projects overall although RUS staff stated they might have additional funds available if good applications are submitted
    • Project is up to $200,000 and 5% of it can be for pre-application expenses. Funds must be expended within 12 months of award
    • Acceptable use of funds are:
      • Development of Broadband Economic Development plans for un or underserved areas
      • Feasibility Studies including
        • Market Surveys and Analysis
        • Planning Engineering
        • Financial Proforma’s
        • Competitive Landscape and perspective partnerships
    • There will be no second round of these grants, if you are interested apply this round
    • Deadline is currently June 7th, there may be a short extension.
    • The application is not submitted through easy grants but instead are paper applications
    • There is no matching requirement
    • Dollars are not intended for actual equipment or infrastructure deployments

Notes from Building the Broadband Economy in NY

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Participating in the Intelligent Community Forum’s Building the Broadband Economy has been very interesting and fun. Last night I sat with people from across Canada and learned about the emphasis that their leaders are putting on broadband as an economic development strategy – from the Atlantic Provinces, to Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. They saw the support of their top government leaders as essential to their successful efforts. On behalf of Dakota Future, I was pleased to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that formalizes a culture of collaboration between communities adopting the Intelligent Community approach.

Today I co-facilitated a session entitled “Five Burning Issues in Rural Communities“. Our five issues were demographics, gaps in broadband services and the difficulty in forming effective partnerships with private sector providers, funding for infrastructure, digital inclusion and application development, creating a culture of use and the many barriers to application adoption for problem solving, and leadership. It turns out that the list from the urban group was amazingly similar!

I am awed by the strategic thinking and doing going on around the world as communities and country’s strive to create and maintain competitive economies. In the same way, people from around the world are very interested in the Blandin Foundation’s approach to our MN Intelligent Rural Communities project. I have been asked many detailed questions and have received very positive feedback. I look forward to reporting lots of progress next year!

I bought what?

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Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar joined Senator Jay Rockefeller and four others in introducing the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. Here’s a quick explanation taken from the Senate press release…

Chairman Rockefeller’s bill will help put an end to the deceptive online sales tactics uncovered by the Commerce Committee’s landmark E-commerce investigation. The bill is sponsored by Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and George LeMieux (R-Fla.). Chairman Rockefeller’s bill will protect online shoppers by:

  • Prohibiting companies like Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty from using misleading post-transaction advertisements by requiring them to clearly disclose the terms of the offers to consumers, and to obtain consumers’ billing information, including full credit or debit card numbers, directly from the consumers.
  • Prohibiting Internet retailers and other commercial websites (“initial merchants”) from transferring a consumer’s billing information, including credit and debit card numbers, to post-transaction third party sellers, like Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty.
  • Requiring companies that use “negative options” on the Internet to meet certain minimum disclosure and enrollment requirements, so consumers will not end up paying recurring fees for goods and services they did not intend to purchase.

Clearly it’s a nice step forward and it would seem to following that greater confidence in online shopping would boost interest and adoption of online shopping.

On a not-super-related note but tangentially related to Senator Klobuchar and greater use of the web … Senator Klobuchar joined another group of colleagues authoring a bill (Veterans One Source Act of 2010, S. 3355) to develop a modern, one-stop, user-friendly Web site for veterans.

What if I don’t want fiber?

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Fiber may be a utlity, but it’s not mandaotry – not in Jackson, Minnesota. According to the Jackson County Pilot…

“We are going to make freely available a connection to every home, every business, every building in the city of Jackson,” said [Jackson Mayor] Jasper, a longtime fiber proponent and the city’s representative on the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Project Board of Directors. “But if you don’t want this on your land, we will not put it there.”

Now if you decide later (or the next owner decides) that you do want fiber the installation cost will be on you.

It’s an interesting notice reflecting a viewpoint I almost forget exists. Also it makes the case for broadband adoption programs. I assume there are situations I cannot imagine where fiber may not be attractive – but for most folks I think it’s just a matter of explaining what broadband can do for them and failing that, what access to fiber can do for resale values.

Connect Minnesota Broadband Map Launch

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I thought folks might be interested in the following…

Join us for a Webinar on May 21

Be among the first to see Minnesota’s new broadband mapping app – BroadbandStat. On Friday, May 21, 2010, the Minnesota Department of Commerce, along with Connect Minnesota, will unveil Minnesota’s updated broadband availability maps including the new and improved interactive map on www.connectmn.org. Connect Minnesota’s staff will answer your questions and highlight the latest high-speed Internet availability insights drawn from the Connect Minnesota initiative.

Live Webinar Demonstration: Connect Minnesota Broadband Map Launch
Friday, May 21, 2010
1:00 PM – 1:30 PM CDT/2:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/297901915
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
________________________________________
BroadbandStat is the nation’s leading broadband mapping app, providing an interactive mapping tool for viewing, analyzing, and validating broadband data, analyzing multi-layered supply and demand market dynamics, and tracking all relevant projects at the state and local level. BroadbandStat was developed by Connected Nation in conjunction with ESRI, the world market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software.

About Connect Minnesota: Connect Minnesota is a subsidiary of Connected Nation and operates as a non-profit in the state of Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Commerce is leading the initiative to increase broadband Internet access throughout Minnesota. Connect Minnesota was commissioned by the Governor’s Office to work with all broadband providers in the state of Minnesota to create detailed maps of broadband coverage in order to accurately pinpoint remaining gaps in broadband availability in Minnesota. www.connectmn.org