Monthly Archives: January 2011

Connect Anoka County works on anchor location contracts

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ABC Newspapers recently provided a thorough update of the ARRA-funded fiber project in Anoka County. A little out of order, here’s the scoop from the article…

The purpose of the broadband project is to lay fiber to connect all government buildings in the county, including the county, cities, school districts and colleges, while providing the backbone for business and industry to connect if they wish to.

The Anoka County Board, on the recommendation of its Information Technology Committee, has directed staff to use a connectivity services template to work with 35 government and quasi-government agencies to gain approval from their governing authority by April 1 this year.

The plan is to connect 145 anchor locations, such as schools, cities, fire stations, hospitals and more in 35 agencies. The County will work with those 35 agencies to create a plan to serve each. Part of the agreement is to require access to each location to place connectivity equipment.

The proposed fees for each “stakeholder” are $75 per month for 100 mg service and $400 per month for 1 gb service, according to Minke and Kevern.

The goal is to get the agreements in place by April 1. With any luck we’ll be looking at a some snow melt by then to help them implement the plan.

NTCA broadband survey – the cooperative view

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The NTCA (National Telecommunications Cooperative Association) recently released their latest broadband/internet survey. For 12 years, they have surveyed their members to gauge the deployment rates of advanced services. I’ve heard many people sing the praises of Telecommunications Coops as providers in rural areas because often the owners are locally based. So they tend to be invested in the future of the community as well as the company.

I’m borrowing heavily from the report’s graphs to give a quick glimpse at results.

What connectivity do the NTCA members offer?

This is a snapshot of where we are. It looks like we have some work to do if we are going to meet the National Broadband Goal of 100 million homes at 100 Mbps. Although in fairness (and I use the term loosely) we are probably looking at statistics that reflect the communities living outside those 100 million homes. The speed goal for the second tier citizens is 4 Mbps. We still have some work to get there.

These stats are national, not Minnesota-specific, but I think it’s helpful to take a look at the state broadband goals too. It is 20 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps up to everyone. It will take effort to get there too. So what do the providers tell us they need to get there? The report also lists the barriers for broadband deployment:

And financially, what would it take to get there? The survey looks at that too:

Fifteen percent of all respondents estimate that they could bring all of their customers currently receiving service below 25 Mbps up to that speed for $1 million or less. An additional 30% could do so for between $1 and $10 million, 26% at a cost of between $10 and $20 million, 11% between $20 and $50 million, and 19% estimate the total cost would exceed $50 million

The good news is that the take rate is increasing. As take rate increases the incentive and review to deploy broadband must also increase.

Survey results indicate an overall broadband take rate from NTCA member companies of 55%.7 Typical prices charged range from $34.95 to $44.95 for cable modem service, $29.95 to $44.95 per month for DSL service, $39.95 to $49.95 for wireless broadband service, and $39.95 to $54.95 for fiber service.

Perhaps that good news feeds into the fiber expectations for the future..

Sixty-seven percent of those survey respondents with a fiber deployment strategy expect to offer fiber to the node to more than 75% of their customers by the end of 2012. Twenty-seven percent of respondents expect to be able to provide FTTC to at least half of their customers by year-end 2012 (up from 22% last year); 46% expect to be able to offer FTTH to the same percentage (down from 55%.)

Are we measuring the right things for broadband policy?

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Remember your first few weeks of learning a language? The teacher would ask – where is the window? And you might answer – mon crayon (my pencil). Sometimes I feel like broadband stats are similar. We ask about broadband use in rural areas – and we get numbers of folks who can, do or won’t access broadband. To be fair, these answers aren’t wrong and they are important but are they the greatest gauge of broadband use in rural areas?

There was a recent article in the Washington Post that demonstrates the point (For minorities, new ‘digital divide’ seen). According to the article…

Latinos and blacks are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things.

Unfortunately mobile access does not help when you need to fill out an application online, as the article asserts, but it can keep you up on latest entertainment Tweets. The article also points out the potential problem…

“I don’t know if it’s the right time to celebrate. There are challenges still there,” says Craig Watkins, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “The Young and the Digital.” He adds: “We are much more engaged, but now the questions turn to the quality of that engagement, what are people doing with that access.”

This article caught my eye. Also it sparked a conversation on an E-Democracy list called the Digital Inclusion Network, which included a response from Jeff Smith of CivSource that really struck me. With his permission, I’m including it below.

Firstly, great article – well written, well researched. Beyond touching on some very important issues regarding race and digital access, it articulates the other side of access, which is use.

For me, this article perfectly frames a long-standing problem in public policy: understanding access vs. use and making judgments about those uses.

Following trends in public policy, academic study and government services, most practitioners measure access, delivery speed & delivery accuracy. Usual questions in need of answering are: What percentage of eligible persons have access to this program? How quickly did they receive services and Did the right person(s) get the proper amounts according to his/her eligibility?

A perfect example comes from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps. For years, government simply made food stamps available to those who were eligible and knew about it. Then a concerted effort was made to increase the amount of people who knew about the program. Metrics being monitored were about access, delivery speed and delivery accuracy. It’s not that these metrics do not make sense, but they’re inadequate to understand efficacy. Until recently, very little has gone into designing a SNAP system that can measure a person’s well-being after having used food stamps. This problem spans many human services programs, but a lot of work is going into better-understanding how aid is used.

Turning to mobile phone access versus use, my own research indicates that access only tells a fraction of the story. In a 2005 study, Leonard Waverman, Fellow at the London Business School and Dean of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, found that, “A developing country which had an average of 10 more mobile phones per 100 population between 1996 and 2003 would have enjoyed per capita GDP growth that was 0.59 percent higher than an otherwise identical country.” After updating that study with data spanning to 2008, I found that increasing mobile phones by 10 per 100 people had a far smaller effect on per capita GDP growth (around four times less impact than the 2005 study indicated). This was in line with intuition. Dramatic increases of mobile phone use in the world’s poorest nations (The Gambia saw 0 per 100 in 2000; by 2008, the country had over 70 mobile phones per 100 people) did very little to translate to actual gains in per capita GDP growth i n those nations.

Does this mean that cell phones in poor countries have had no effect on making lives better or enhancing economic growth? No. But it means that simply giving access to technology will yield similarly simplistic results. In fact, a study about fish markets in India is a great example of how cell phones have had significant dividends for communities (users and non-users alike). See study pdf at: http://bit.ly/hhzAue

As more people look to delineate access and use, as Pew and others are trying to do, especially among different socio-economic classes or races, policy questions must try to capture some measures of well-being – not simply access and speed.

Minnesota communities get intelligent nod

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Thanks to Robert Bell of the Intelligent Community Forum for his generous praise of the leaders within our demonstration communities. At a meeting last week in Mora with community leaders just embarking on a broadband initiative, I was just reinforcing the need for local champions who are not only willing to stand up and promote the importance of broadband and technology-based economic development, but are then willing to take the next step and start working on it.

Our demonstration communities have funded a tremendous number and fascinating mix of projects with a wide number of public and private sector partners. Our project coordinators and their steering teams are champions – doing the hard work of rating projects, encouraging collaboration and asking partners to do more in exchange for the funding. It is great to see the national recognition for our project!

MN Representative Winkler looks at broadband

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The Golden Valley Patch recently reported on Representative Ryan Winkler (DFL), District 44B and his plans for the legislative session. I was delighted to see that broadband topped his list…

First, he said he’s proposing an idea to use state capitol investment funds or bond funds to pay for broadband connection in Minnesota schools.

“There’s still a large number of schools around Minnesota that have no connection to high speed internet,” Winkler said. “So that means they have no connection to online learning or better use of data for figuring out who’s doing well or what methods are working well.”

Winkler said he has asked Governor Mark Dayton to include the bonding request for school broadband in the bonding bill he’ll propose to the legislature.

Dave Peters of MPR’s Ground Level pointed out last week that the recent Minnesota Broadband Advisory Task Force report calls out schools as an area that could use a little broadband attention. Hopefully the report can be a tool for Representative Winkler and that Representative Winkler can be a tool for the Broadband Task Force in a effort to get broadband to schools – and hoepfully beyond.

Lake County – big meeting today

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I wrote about Lake County right before Christmas. Just to catch anyone up – Lake County received ARRA-funding for a FTTH network. One of the project partners is National Public Broadband (NPB). Tim Nulty is one of the key members of NBP. Years ago Tim worked to get fiber in rural areas in Vermount through a company called Burlington Telcom. Tim left Burlington a while ago. Since he left the company has run into fiancial troubles. So there has been some concern about how Burlington’s situation will relate to or have an impact on Lake County. And there has been some concern that that concern is unwarranted.

This has brought the Lake County project to one of its first barriers. Tonight, January 10 (at 6 pm), the Lake County Commissioners are meeting about this issue at the Grand Superior Lodge. So we’ll know more on Tuesday.

I hope that this is a barrier they will be able to overcome quickly. Sometimes that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger – maybe this will make them stronger or at least smarter. Chris Mitchell has written a recap of the situation quoting from a recent editorial in the Lake County Chronicle…

The county can use NPB’s disclosure mistake to its advantage, by holding NPB’s feet to the fire on all elements of the fiber rollout plan. If NPB can convince the board that this early communication snafu is the last, members would be right to keep moving forward with the project by permanently partnering with NPB.

Wary of Net Neutrality? Maybe there’s an app for that.

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The FCC announced earlier this week a challenge to developers…

FCC announced a challenge to researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness. The Open Internet Challenge is part of the FCC’s efforts to empower end users to help preserve Internet openness. Details of the challenge are posted at openinternet.gov/challenge.

“This challenge is about using the open Internet to protect the open Internet,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Our goal is to foster user-developed applications that shine light on any practice that might be inconsistent with the free and open Internet. Empowering consumers with information about their own connections will promote a vibrant, innovative, world-leading broadband ecosystem.”

I love this approach for government encouraging public-private partnership. It’s a nice example of the challenges listed on the Challenge.gov site. The range of projects opportunities here are staggering. Here’s a quick list of items I thought might interest readers:

Some challenges offer cash rewards; some don’t. That is another aspect that caught my attention especially since I learned this morning while listening to TED speaker Simon Sinek speak on how great leaders inspire action – that money was not an inspiration.

Minnesota BTOP project poised for action in 2011

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In March, 2010, the Blandin Foundation and 19 project partners were awarded $4.7 million in BTOP funding for Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities or MIRC. The MIRC coalition brings a network of resources and support to rural Minnesota individuals and communities – especially those unemployed and seeking employment, small businesses, coalitions of government entities, and local leaders.

There are two types of MIRC partners. Project Partners provide services in Minnesota, such as PCs for People, a nonprofit organization that refurbishes used computers with the help of people transitioning off government assistance and passes them on to low income individuals and families who do not own computers.

Through grant funding Project Partners, PCs for People will be able to extend or expand their services – especially to rural areas.

Our other partners, the 11 Demonstration Communities, have each received $100,000 to spend on projects in their areas. Since the project began, these communities have been assessing their technology strengths and evaluating need. This Fall they issued RFPs in their local communities, seeking locally grown projects that expand broadband adoption. “Local answers to local issues” is an important aspect of MIRC success.

The Demo Communities received many more proposals than they were able to fund; so MIRC leaders worked with communities to help encourage collaboration and project refinement. We were pleased to learn at a recent MIRC convening that the Demo Communities have made tough decisions and projects have been selected in each community. Here are some examples:

Stevens County: included in their projects in an effort to put public computers and Wi-Fi hotspots in 5 communities in the county.

Benton County: one project puts computers in the homes of seniors and folks with disabilities helping them connect remotely to health care services, encouraging them to learn how to use computers and staying connected with loved ones.

More stories were shared at MIRC members meeting last week. We also learned about tools that MIRC leadership has been developing for use in and out of MIRC communities, such as the Broadband Toolkit, which compiles a wide range of links organized by sector to help partners in the field answer the question – “what could I do with all of that broadband?”

Our prediction – or at least our hope for 2011 is that people aren’t asking what you can do with broadband – but asking what did we ever do without it?

MVTV Wireless: a brief funding history

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It’s fun to hear stories of broadband success in Minnesota. It’s instructive to hear how they happened. Thanks to Dan Richter for passing on the story of MVTV Wireless’ success as posted on the Southwest Initiative Foundation web site. The story outlines some of the funding history of MVTV – I thought it might help inspire and motivate other communities and/or businesses.

Based in Granite Falls, MVTV Wireless is a nonprofit, member-owned corporation made up of members/stockholders, who pay a one-time fee of $50.00 per household. According to the SWIF article, they have more than 3,200 subscribers throughout 16,000 square miles of central and southwest Minnesota.

MVTV has received support from SWIF to help them grow…

In 2000 and 2001, MVTV received loans from SWIF’s Revolving Loan Fund to help finance an expansion. These funds helped fill the gap of what was needed for the project and what MVTV’s bank partners could provide. Dan [Richter] credits SWIF for their important role in the project, as well as the Small Business Development Center, for giving him confidence and assistance to successfully move MVTV forward.

SWIF felt it was their mission to support a local, growing business – but also to meet the goals of their Rural Technology and Telecommunications Project, which is no longer an initiative. It seems as if the funding gave MVTV the deepening roots to go for more funding…

MVTV continues to expand to improve service as well. They received a Pilot Broadband Loan from the Rural Utilities Service Broadband Initiative Program in 2002 and were recently awarded funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is supporting updates to the current system, new access points that will nearly double its service area, and the addition of 1,500 new customers.

Last summer I spoke with John Schultz of U-reka Broadband, who is involved with several ARRA-funded projects. MVTV’s story reminded me of much of the advice that John gave. Specifically, if you are a community look local and look to the co-ops and independent providers. I would add – don’t forget to look local for funding too. There are Initiative Foundations in all corners of Minnesota. Blandin Foundation has a couple of programs that offer funding for expanding broadband. Of course there are more traditional means as well and I’m sure your local Economic Development Authority or Small Business Development Center can help with those.

Local Gov Innovation Awards – deadline February 4

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This isn’t necessarily about broadband but it could be. I’d love to see some e-government projects make the short list. The Local Government Innovation Awards will celebrate outstanding efforts to imporve local services. Here’s the blurb from the InCommon web site…

WELCOME TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT INNOVATION AWARDS!

Are you doing innovative work? The Local Government Innovation Awards wants to hear about it!

The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota is pleased to partner with the Association of MN Counties, the League of Minnesota Cities and the MN School Boards Association for the 5th annual Local Government Innovation Awards.
The Awards recognize and honor outstanding cities, counties and schools in Minnesota that demonstrate results in improving local services.

This year’s awards focus on service redesign. Up to 18 awards will be given out (6 to cities, 6 to counties and 6 to schools). We are now accepting entries through February 4, 2011!

Help us spread the word about this opportunity to share and honor the innovative work happening around Minnesota.
Questions? Please contact us at heapx004@umn.edu or call 612-625-5093.

Looking for curriculum and ideas for getting seniors online

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I had an intersting talk last week with Don Samuelson of DSSA Strategies. Don is working with MyWay Village to provide education and training in the practical benefits of the Internet and computers to low income seniors and people with disabilities. They were recipients of BTOP/ARRA funding.

You can get a peek into the program in the video below:

We’ve seen in various research reports (including the Census, Jack Geller and Connect Minnesota’s report)s that seniors are one of the groups that finding themselves on the far end of the digital divide. Well, Don is working on gathering information and tools that might help get seniors online. He’s looking for programs, curricular material or stories. If you have any to share please send them his way. (DSSA310@aol.com) or share them as a comment here and I’ll make sure he gets them.

Blandin eNews January

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Here’s the news from our latest newsletter. It’s mostly a compilation of Minnesota-related stories from the blog in the last month – but sometimes it’s nice to have it compiled.

News from the Blandin on Broadband Blog

Minnesota Broadband Advisory Task Force: Report is Out
The 2010 Broadband Advisory Task Force Report was posted on the Department of Commerce site late last week. The report offers updated statistics, news on significant changes in the broadband landscape since the first Broadband Task Force Report and details on Minnesota-based ARRA recipients. http://wp.me/p3if7-17Z Hindered by tight deadlines and big changes in the Legislature however, the report serves mostly as a baseline report and a promise for more in the future. http://wp.me/p3if7-18T

Minnesota Ranks 13 in New Economy Preparedness
According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s (ITIF) 2010 State New Economy Index, Minnesota ranks 13 in terms of preparedness for the New Economy. http://wp.me/p3if7-18B The Midwest states did not do well; Minnesota was the highest ranking state in the region. Recently, the Minnesota Commission on Service Innovation published a report promoting better use of technology in the state; perhaps that will improve our ITIF ranking in 2011. http://wp.me/p3if7-18e

Minnesota Ranks 32 for Speed
Speed Matters released their annual speed reports. Minnesota ranked 32 in terms of broadband speed. The report indicates that 49% of the US comes in with less than 4 Mbps connection. http://wp.me/p3if7-184 This statistic is in line with another recent report released by the FCC in December, which indicated that 58% of reportable connections were slower than 3 Mbps. http://wp.me/p3if7-17O

Blandin’s MIRC Project Finds Local Partners
The ARRA-funded Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) project took an exciting step forward last month when the 11 demonstration communities selected projects at the very local level to promote and support broadband expansion. Projects were selected through an RFP process. http://wp.me/p3if7-17x

Net Neutrality
A Net Neutrality bill passed that wholeheartedly pleased neither fans nor foes of Net Neutrality. Foes are worried about the potential barrier on future wireless traffic; fans are disappointed that it doesn’t go far enough with wired technology. http://wp.me/p3if7-18h

Local Broadband News

Cook County
Danna MacKenzie shares her experience developing and maintaining a successful online community discussion. http://wp.me/p3if7-18K

Hancock
The Hancock City Council approved a move forward with ebooks at the Hancock Public Library. http://wp.me/p3if7-18p

Jackson
ARRA recipient, the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services Board, is preparing to promote their upcoming FTTH network to local residents. http://wp.me/p3if7-18w

Lake County
Lake County is receiving unwanted attention as one of the major players in their FTTH project has a past project that is running into trouble. http://wp.me/p3if7-18t

Lake County is looking for a Project Volunteer Coordinator for their fiber project. http://wp.me/p3if7-17I

Minneapolis
Minneapolis Wi-Fi received a good grade from customers, although the City of Minneapolis may be underutilizing their access to the network. http://wp.me/p3if7-188

E-Democracy shares notes on their successful online discussions using examples from Minneapolis community lists. http://wp.me/p3if7-176

David Keyes, Director the City of Seattle’s digital inclusion programs, speaks at a Digital Inclusion conference in Minneapolis. http://wp.me/p3if7-17B

St Cloud
St Cloud is testing a new, light-based Wi-Fi solution in local office buildings. http://wp.me/p3if7-18H

Stevens County
Stevens County announces 10 local broadband expansion projects that received funds from the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) program. http://wp.me/p3if7-18b

Twin Cities
ADC Foundation awarded $3.75 million to five community partners in the Twin Cities and Juarez, Mexico for technology-related projects. http://wp.me/p3if7-17F

University of Minnesota students are picking up extra cash and odd jobs through social media sites and online communities. http://wp.me/p3if7-17t

Windom
Students in Windom learn broadcasting skills with local sports events – soon to be broadcast online. http://wp.me/p3if7-18E

(Many stories are gathered from local online newspaper. Unfortunately each newspaper has a different policy in regards to archive news and therefore we cannot guarantee access to all articles cited.)

Coleman’s Corner

As we all know, winter is a great time for communities to get things done in Minnesota! Over the next couple weeks, community leaders in two rural counties will begin work on initiatives through Blandin Foundation’s Community Broadband Resources (CBR) Program. For more information on CBR, go to http://broadband.blandinfoundation.org .

Both counties face similar issues – a large rural geography with most residents living in small communities served by one or more broadband providers. They also have people who live in the countryside with very limited or no broadband access. Many are small business owners or farmers who could use broadband. Some are older adults whose lives could be improved via better communications with friends and families and tele-health providers. Some are students who need to be able to access educational materials from their homes.

These counties fairly represent the remaining unserved areas of rural Minnesota that includes about 5% of all MN households. Through Community Broadband Resources, local leaders will begin to decide whether and how they will solve their broadband problems alone or in partnership, or whether they will just wait hopefully and somewhat impatiently for incumbent providers to serve them, enabled either by goodwill, technology innovations, regulatory reform or state or federal investment incentives.

Over the longer term, all of us will be affected by the changing nature of the Internet. We are already seeing this in mobile technology and the “apps” available for download. There is a very interesting article on the web site Ars Technica. http://tinyurl.com/32vxs96 The article discusses the advantages of current cable technology over more limited bandwidth DSL technology and cable’s ability to channelize content and manage specialized applications. With cable providers limiting their presence to cities and towns, rural residents maybe left without access to advanced broadband applications without FTTP access. With the federal stimulus and with continuing FTTP deployment by Minnesota’s rural telephone cooperatives, we may see a distinct digital divide emerging across rural Minnesota.

Minnesota Broadband Advisory Task Force report is out

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Late last week the Department of Commerce posted the 2010 Broadband Report from the Advisory Task Force; it details the progress in reaching the goal of universal ultra-high-speed-broadband access in Minnesota.

I’ve been following the Advisory Task Force as a fly on the wall of their meetings, which began as soon as they were appointed in August 2010. In many ways I think the latest report is a benchmark with a promise of more. As Department of Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson put it in the intro…

In the 2010 report, the Minnesota Broadband Advisory Task Force has established the baseline measurements for compiling the required reports to the Legislature through 2015. In future years, the task force can focus more on recommendations for how to achieve the goals that have been set. Those recommendations would be of high value to broadband users and providers and include actions that could be implemented by the Legislature.

There are some gems in the report – many of them supplied by Connect Minnesota, who will be publishing their own report soon. They have also included some nice Minnesota-specific info on the ARRA awards including a nice map of recipients (pg 12), a table of awards (pg 23) and a detailed table of awards in the Appendix, which I think will be a boon for the techies out there.

There’s also a laundry list of expectations for next year…

We anticipate a much fuller examination of the status of the state goals next year. Items on the list for investigation and exploration going forward include:

  • stimulus projects progress
  • the increased use of broadband in healthcare
  • the funding and support of broadband technology in our schools
  • digital literacy improvements
  • the correlation between federal actions and Minnesota goals
  • gaps in broadband connectivity for local governments
  • solutions for the unserved populations in MN

It will be interesting to see what happens with the report. There are so many changes at the Capital and so many priorities – I don’t expect that we’ll see a lot of ripples unless we make them ourselves. It’s never a bad time to share your opinions with elected officials, this report might provide an opportunity.

Libraries before Broadband

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I want to thank my friend Terri Horsmann at Cargill for this great video of librarianship before broadband. It’s part of the archives of the Minnesota Special Library Association chapter.

Here’s a quick description…

Filmed in the Twin Cities in 1964, the film shows a day in the life of a special librarian as he travels to a variety of libraries in the Twin Cities, looking for help with a complex research question. You’ll see the variety of libraries he visited, and might be struck by the leg-work required to answer a question that today, we could most likely find very quickly through subscription databases.

I thought it would be a fun reminder of what life was like without broadband before we step into 2011.