The ARRA broadband stimulus funding has at least two benefits. The obvious benefit is that it provides funds to help deploy or promote broadband. The communities with funded projects obviously benefit. The less obvious benefit is that with public money comes the privilege of sharing your successful recipe. So that all of us can learn what works and what doesn’t. In a perfect world, the communities that receive money are sharing the tools they create with others to help other communities build broadband too.

That’s a long intro and thank you to Anoka County for sharing some of their tools. I met Anoka County’s David Minke in Washington DC last month. I was so impressed with what he’s doing in Anoka and how kind he was to share the details.

In the latest update…

Entities continue to approve the Connectivity Services Agreement. As of this week, we know of eight entities that have taken formal action. These organizations include the City of Blaine, City of Ramsey, City of East Bethel, City of Coon Rapids, City of Columbus, City of St. Francis, Ramsey County and PACT Charter School. Many organizations are scheduled for the next two weeks.

We met on Monday with some of the attorneys and were able to make some final language changes that seem to give many of the organizations more comfort with the agreement. Thank you to all for your patience and persistence in this process.

But the best part is that Anoka County has shared their Connectivity Services Agreement With Community Anchor Institution(s) For Broadband Services At Co-location Service Site(s) with us. I thought this could be a great tool for any community that was looking at working with anchor institutions to deploy broadband. It’s yeoman’s work to get multiple entities to agree to anything – hopefully this will help; it’s a marked up version that includes the latest changes.

One quick final addition. I wrote this up earlier and queued to post today – but got a fun update I wanted to add. David got three more entities to sign up this week. Here’s the list so far:

City of Ramsey
City of East Bethel
City of Coon Rapids
City of Columbus
City of St. Francis
City of Blaine
City of Lino Lakes
City of Oak Grove
City of Fridley
City of Columbia Heights
City of Circle Pines
City of Lexington
Linwood Township
City of Nowthen
PACT Charter School
Columbia Hts School Dist