Monthly Archives: March 2016

Faribault enthusiastic about broadband funding – curious about details for grants

Posted on by
Reply

The Faribault Daily News reports on the state of broadband funding in the legislature…

A bill authored by Rep. Dave Baker (R-Willmar) calls for $35 million in broadband spending. While that’s more than three times the amount approved previously, it is well short of Gov. Mark Dayton’s target of $100 million of state spending to aggressively expand the broadband infrastructure to unserved and underserved areas.

And asks what the impact of changes in how any money will be distributed has an impact on the area..

Baker’s bill would require 60 percent of the funds to be awarded to unserved areas with the remaining going to underserved areas.

Deanna Kuennen, Faribault’s community and economic development director, attended the Minnesota Broadband Network seminar recently, which involved higher-level policy discussions on how best to expand the existing broadband infrastructure.

According to Kuennen, Rice County is currently 80 percent covered, meaning state dollars may not be forthcoming to engage the last 20 percent at the expense of unserved areas.

“Ten [megabits per second download speed] and 5 [Mbps upload speed] is the minimum, and in Rice County, 80 percent have that already. We’re considered served,” said Kuennen. “If you go out and talk to some of our users, they might not agree. But it will affect our ability to get funding in the future.”

It’s interesting to see that this year everyone is interested in discussing the money AND the details. There’s a recognition that especially in rural areas, broadband is a game-changer for the whole community and therefore the whole community should be part of the conversation…

“When we start talking about the infrastructure, in the past the government used to be involved in water and some get involved in electricity,” said Kuennen. “This needs to be one of those standardized things that government talks about.”

Broadband is coming up in rural Minnesota elections

Posted on by
Reply

Gary Schindler is running for House seat 27A House. He recently received the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsement. In an open letter to votes in the Albert Lea Tribune, Schindler lists broadband as one of his top issues…

We need access to high speed broadband Internet. It is a resource that will provide our children with the opportunity to learn more in school and at home, and it will increase the productivity and profitability of our area businesses and farms.

Access to broadband is not just an investment in routers, servers and wires. It is an investment in us.

Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation supports Sate broadband funding

Posted on by
Reply

Tim Penny from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF) supports broadband funding – as posted in the Mankato Free Press…

Broadband funding: There is a proposal to increase funding to Minnesota’s Office of Broadband Development to lay more fiber networks across rural Minnesota. Historically, $10 million has been allocated in recent years ($20 million in 2014). This year’s proposal is $100 million.

Our partner Blandin Foundation has been instrumental in moving this issue forward on behalf of Greater Minnesota, and we support their goal of ensuring all Minnesotan’s have access to convenient, affordable world-class broadband networks.

Blandin’s CEO Kathleen Annette cited that nearly a quarter of Minnesota households don’t have sufficient Internet speeds for things like homework, online business operations, and more, and that Minnesota ranks 23rd in broadband access.

“This stark urban-rural divide hurts all Minnesotans,” Annette said. I agree.

SMIF is one of many organizations that have endorsed the Minnesota Broadband Vision…

Everyone in Minnesota will be able to use convenient, affordable world-class broadband networks that enable us to survive and thrive in our communities and across the globe.

On getting broadband done from Institute for Local Self Reliance and US Internet

Posted on by
Reply

Recently Chris Mitchell (Institute for Local Self Reliance) interviewed Travis Carter (US Internet). Chris is a proponent of municipal/community networks. Travis is Co-founder of USI, a local broadband provider in Minneapolis. USI has been around forever. Currently they are busy pulling fiber throughout Minneapolis. They seem to have a strong ethos of get ‘er done and customer service. Their customers are happy; their prices are very competitive.

I waned to pull out pieces of the interview (it’s all available both in transcript and podcast) because I think there’s a lot to learn from a provider that seems to be doing lots of things right. BUT I also want to recognize (as Travis does) that building a business in Minneapolis is different in many ways than extending service to a rural area – but still he makes some points

On the MN Task Force Speed Goals…

Chris Mitchell: I get the impression that you were unimpressed with the State’s broadband task force and even some of the other trade meetings where some of the telephone companies are in. They’re still trying to claim that DSL is broadband and people don’t really need very much capacity. It struck me that seemed like a reality shock when you’re first describing it.

Travis Carter: I often try to think, if I was in their shoes, that’s the story I would be telling as well because they have an infrastructure that’s built. I’m assuming the vast majority of it has been paid for so it is, from a business standpoint, quite frankly, it’s very profitable for them. Why take a huge jump when you can take a minimal jump and still fall within the confines of what the FCC today is saying is acceptable broadband. I, from a Minnesota standpoint … Again, I have to preface this by saying, we have the luxury of being in a high density area. When you go out into rural Minnesota, I took a tour one time out to the Renville area, just to see what it was. The logistics of taking a gigabyte or a multi-gigabyte service to a farm, that’s a big job. I think … You can still do the town. Then, you could take the income from the town and build out from there, which is no different than from what we’re doing here in Minneapolis. We’re taking the income, we’re re-investing it, and continuing to expand.

On wireless versus wired (how they work together)

Travis Carter: Pre-Netflix, WiFi was great. Post Netflix, it caused a lot of contention on the network. About 82% our bandwidth today is some sort of streaming entertainment. With high def and the other even 4K and things in the future, it put the heavy, heavy, heavy constraint on the backbone. Our initial foray into fiber was, “How do we solve this backbone problem between our WiFi nodes? We need to get those bits out of the air and onto a cable as soon as we can.” Quite frankly, I didn’t know anything about it, but I figured we’d run fiber all over plant Earth. Somebody must know about it. Our friends over at Corning came in with their van. Sat outside, opened the doors up, and said, “Welcome to fiber.” We went down to our friend at Ditch witch, and they said, “Here’s a drill. Here’s how you make a hole in the ground.” We started piecing all the puzzles together. Again, we’re Rodney up in the classroom going, “We should be able to figure out.” We’re not really inventing anything. We’re taking things other people invented and putting them together. That’s how we got into fiber. That was our initial plan was to hook these nodes together to bring egress or backbone to this to satisfy the ever-increasing, or at this point, the inconsequential thirst for bandwidth.

On working with a community

Travis Carter: If I was to rank Minneapolis, I would say they’ve been incredibly easy to work with compared to stories I’ve heard with other people. Right-a-way, the permitting department, these are all … This has been really, really, really a relatively easy process. We were willing to work with them to help us understand the process. Our biggest issues, quite frankly, was there was no precedent when we set up of a central office or a switching station, there was no precedent for where those sat. We got thrown into this other bucket of “other” from a zoning perceptive. Now, we had to zone ourselves a certain way. We had to build this little Taj Mahal in the middle of the neighborhood because they could make us. We were just assuming we could put up a little concrete building and off we go.

A little more on the rural difference (especially rural and northern!) …

Travis Carter: That’s the big Achilles heel in Minnesota here, is, unlike today, which is beautiful, we usually don’t start til April 15, and we’re done November 15. We have a very short window to build. Our network is completely underground, so we have to directionally drill everything. All the main line, all the backbone, all the drops to the homes. From a construction standpoint, it’s a big, big, big job. This isn’t just streaming some fiber down some poles in the alley that are already there. There’s a ton of benefit to this network. It’s underground. It’s very reliable. It’s Ethernet, so there’s no weird technologies or splitters or shared anything in there. It’s simple to troubleshoot. It’s simple to maintain. It’s consistent. It uses off-the-shelf electronics. It’s very, very, very reliable. It’s just we don’t have enough months out of the year. What we’ve looked at, is we’ve looked at maybe going to a city in the south, somewhere. The problem you run into is the bandwidth consumption is so high on these fiber networks, that we need to be close to someplace with adequate bandwidth. We can’t be way up in northern Minnesota, where our cost to deliver the service is to high. We have to be near a major metropolitan area to get that type of capacity.

Chris Mitchell: Or, if you’re familiar with some of the things like Allied Fibers, slowly building these neutral fiber routes across the US. You just need to tap in somewhere where you get back to a point of …

Travis Carter: Exactly. Exactly. We have to get back to somewhere. Cermak in Chicago, 511 here, NCC in Omaha. If we can get to somewhere like that, that solves a tremendous, tremendous problem. It’s a problem I saw at the Minnesota Broadband Association is, they were all talking about bringing bandwidth out to the farm, or bringing bandwidth out to the rural area. These people are going to use it. There’s no difference between a user up in the iron head of Minnesota and a user in Minneapolis. They’re all going to use the same amount of bandwidth. You’ve just to be able to get it out of your network somewhere. They have a much bigger challenge than we have here in Minneapolis.

Chris Mitchell: Although, fortunately, in the Iron Range, they have the Northeast Service Cooperative now. Increasingly, we do have some of these where it’s been smart, local investments. In that case, enabled by the stimulus, but people have done the work there to make sure that they have some of this available.

Travis Carter: If I were a town and I was looking to have somebody come in and be an alternate provider, that would be one of the very first things I would highlight is, “Here is the way to get onto some fiber transit to get out of our city, back to a place where you can buy bandwidth at a reasonable price.”

Senator Sparks and Representative Sanders promote telecom deregulation

Posted on by
Reply

Today MinnPost published an editorial from Senator Sparks and Representative Sanders. They mention the Minnesota Broadband Fund and the need for telecom regulation…

There is lots of talk about how much money the state should spend on ensuring every Minnesotan has proper access to a broadband connection (“Minnesota governor’s budget allocates $100 million to expand rural high-speed broadband”). We are certain to have another robust debate at the Capitol this year around public funding for these initiatives. Yet, we must also modernize Minnesota’s communications laws to level the playing field between all the providers. While technology has advanced, Minnesota’s statutes governing communications date back to a law passed over 100 years ago.

The have introduced a bill…

That is why we introduced legislation (SF895/HF776) to ensure that Minnesota consumers are protected while providing regulatory certainty for VoIP or IP-enabled service providers. This legislation would catch Minnesota up to the 33 states that have already modernized their state communications laws. Updating our laws benefits consumers, urban and rural areas equally and will help grow our economy.

And explain what the bill won’t do…

Importantly, the changes as proposed in our legislation would not impact 911 emergency services as some claim or traditional landline voice service – nobody loses their phone line! Additionally, federal and state consumer protections are not changed.

You can look at the bill for more info on what it would do. Here’s the short description from the House (you can get a longer version from the Senate)…

Voice-over-Internet protocol service and Internet protocol-enabled service regulation prohibited.

How do other areas handle the digital divide?

Posted on by
Reply

At the MN Broadband Task Force meeting earlier this month, the Task Force learned from Colin Rhinesmith that are four aspects or strategies of a successful digital inclusion plan:

  • Access to good, affordable computers
  • Reduced rates for broadband
  • Public access (such as at libraries)
  • Training

The NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) recently posted a recap of some of the successful projects they funded in the Pacific Northwest. I thought it might be interesting to see how – if at all – they addressed those four strategies – especially since as the article points out, Internet adoption rates in the Pacific Northwest are above national levels:

Much of the funding in the area went to connectivity…

Northwest Open Access Network, or NoaNet, highlighted the role of public utilities in providing broadband to local communities across Washington State. Noanet, a consortium of 10 public utility districts that provides wholesale telecom services, used nearly $139 million in BTOP funding to expand its high-speed network by more than 1,200 fiber miles, connect 300 schools, libraries and other anchors, provide new access to 16 last-mile providers and increase speeds for another 34. Today, NoaNet operates a 3,300-mile network that delivers broadband speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second.

Sandy, Ore., officials said the city can hardly keep up with demand after launching a municipal fiber network 22 months ago. With a 50 percent take rate at launch and 10-15 new sign-ups every week, there is currently a three-month wait to get connected. SandyNet network was financed with a $7.5 million revenue bond. It offers speeds of up to a gigabit thanks to a $7.8 million BTOP grant that went to the County of Clackamas, Ore., to build a dark fiber network to link local communities like Sandy to the Internet backbone.

And ToledoTel offered proof that small, family-owned local phone companies can bring advanced technology to rural communities. The company has built out fiber-to-the-home service in its own service territory, and has partnered with neighboring public utility districts to bring fiber to the home to surrounding areas.

But some also went to computers, training and reduces rates…

The workshop also underscored that digital inclusion is about more than just providing access. It’s about teaching people how to use the Internet to look for a job or sign up for government services or access healthcare information. And it’s about making broadband affordable.

That’s why ToledoTel used a $2 million BTOP award to provide free laptops, Internet training and broadband service to about 800 people in its service territory, includes members of the Cowlitz Tribe. And it’s why Seattle has done more than just streamline permitting processes, update right-of-way policies and modernize the cable franchising process to make it easier for carriers to invest. The city also offers digital literacy training and has partnered with Google to make free portable Wi-Fi hot spots available for checkout from local libraries. At the other end of the state, the Spokane Public Library is exploring ways to boost Wi-Fi signals at its six branches to provide access to surrounding communities.

Slayton hosts broadband conversion – they need it for commerce and understand the nuances of building it

Posted on by
Reply

The Daily Globe posted an article over the weekend on a broadband discussion that happened on Friday…

A Friday morning gathering at the Southwest Regional Development Commission office in Slayton brought together leaders and broadband representatives from multiple counties to share the struggles of broadband expansion with District 22 Sen. Bill Weber (R-Luverne) and District 23A Rep. Bob Gunther (R-Fairmont).

They spoke about how important it is to have broadband for economic development…

Thies introduced one of his customers, a rural Jackson resident who developed two companies. Troy Rasmussen created a mobile X-ray company in 2010 that relied on a broadband connection to send images. With the help of SMBS, he was able to send the images without having to drive to Worthington to reach a fiber link. Four years later, Rasmussen created a wireless Internet company, which he has now built to more than 100 customers.

Jim Sykora, of the First Independent Bank of Russell, said his bank is using T1 lines to digitally connect their nine offices — a process that costs tens of thousands of dollars per month.

They also talked about the nuances of current bills at the legislature that could mean greater public funding for broadband. Such as the focus funding on unversed vs underserved communities…

Dan Dorman, executive director of the Greater Minnesota Partnership, said it will take at least $300 million, and up to $1 billion, to expand broadband to all of the state’s unserved population today. Dorman spoke Friday about the needs in small communities that don’t qualify for grant funding. In some areas, such as Lac Qui Parle County, all of the rural area is served, but the city of Madison wasn’t able to access grant dollars. The result is a donut, with people in rural areas getting better download speeds than residents of the city.

And prevailing wages…

One of the concerns raised by attendees was the prevailing wage law and how much of an impact it can have on broadband construction. Rock County Administrator Kyle Oldre said prevailing wages would have driven up the cost of their project by 30 percent to 32 percent.

And CAF 2 funding…

Humphrey also raised concerns about CAF2 (Connect America Funds), which are promoting a minimum standard speed of 10 megabytes download and 1 megabyte upload. [Ann’s note – should read megabit per second or Mbps]

“That’s already antiquated in our world,” he said. “10:1 is a Band-Aid. It’s not going to build fiber; it’s going to upgrade copper services. Very little fiber will be deployed with the CAF funding.

And they talked about what Nobles County is doing to increase broadband access in the area…

Nobles County Administrator Tom Johnson told the group about its status as a Blandin Broadband Community. Currently the county is working with Blandin on a feasibility study, and Johnson hopes they will one day be able to deliver broadband access to every home, just as Rock County is working toward.

To do that in other counties of southwest Minnesota, many agreed, will take a variety of partnerships.

“There’s not one solution to fix all of this,” Reisch said. “It’s going to take different solutions to try to get this resolved.”

Broadband gap in rural healthcare facilities is growing – maybe rules are getting in the way

Posted on by
Reply

According to Daily Yonder, rural areas are falling farther behind urban counterparts when it comes to broadband access…

rural healthcare gaps

The results (as depicted in the chart above) show a significant difference in the speeds at which healthcare facilities connect between metro and non-metro areas…

More striking, however, is how those rates changed between 2010 and 2014. Healthcare facilities in metro areas saw their rates of “very fast” connections shoot up from 14% to 55%, while facilities in non-metro areas saw a much smaller increase (from 5% to 12%). Similarly, the percentage of metro facilities with “very slow” connections decreased from 33% to 11%, but non-metro connections of this type had a much slower decline (from 38% to 28%). The result is that the healthcare connectivity gap is much worse as of 2014 than it was in 2010. Similar gaps exist for upload speeds (which are important for technologies like EHRs and HIEs).

Sounds like the biggest issue isn’t the hospitals but other health care facilities…

The remainder of the study goes on to show that this gap is primarily driven by non-hospital facilities. That is, the rate of growth for hospital connections between 2010 and 2014 is actually quite similar between metro and non-metro areas. However, when the analysis is done for non-hospital facilities (private practices, health departments, pharmacies, clinics, etc.), it becomes clear that the gap is dramatically increasing for these types of healthcare services. Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission has recommended that solo primary care practices have speeds of at least 4 MBPS and that small primary care practices, nursing homes, and rural health clinics have speeds of at least 10 MBPS. The latest data (from 2014) indicates that a significant portion of rural healthcare facilities are not meeting these requirements.

The disheartening thing is that apparently folks have been aware of the problem and have been trying to offer assistance – but perhaps the rules to get assistance are too stringent…

This increasing connectivity gap happened despite the existence of a pilot (and resulting full-time) program called the Healthcare Connect Fund. This program had funds available to support broadband connectivity for public or not-for-profit health care providers including hospitals, rural health clinics, and local health departments. However, the fund is dramatically underused – perhaps due to overly stringent requirements. This research suggests that changes to this program should be considered to encourage participation by nonhospital facilities.

I worry about the same thing with recent iterations of the Minnesota broadband bills floating around the House and Senate. Broadband – like healthcare – is tough to understand. The Office of Broadband Development has received praise for their management of the previous rounds of grants. They work, eat, sleep, this stuff. Maybe the legislators should defer some of the rules to them. The same way policymakers might look at having healthcare experts look at issues with the Healthcare Fund.

In other news – Minnesota legislators are worried about shortages of doctors in rural areas. They are looking into grants for doctors who do residencies in rural areas.

That’s why Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, and other senators want to address a growing doctor shortage throughout the state with a variety of grants and programs to encourage and educate more physicians. Sheran, the chair of the Senate Health, Human Services and Housing Committee, put a bill before that committee Wednesday to create a grant for prospective family medicine doctors to undergo their residencies in rural Minnesota.

Maybe these articles have more in common than is immediately apparent. Maybe better broadband would attract more doctors by allowing for access to continued education, opening the door to remote telehealth access to specialists simply streamlining some tasks (see the recent article I posted on impact of better broadband on business) and allowing doctors to focus on patients and medicine.

Can broadband help reduce or postpone food deserts in Minnesota?

Posted on by
Reply

Minnesota Daily recently posted an article on food deserts in Minnesota. It sounds like the longevity of locally owned rural grocery stores is in question…

A recent University of Minnesota study reveals that 62 percent of rural grocers intend to own their stores for 10 more years or less and that more than 70 percent of them have no plan to appoint a successor once they quit. Naturally, this raises concerns about how to guarantee rural residents’ access to healthy food.

They offer broadband as a support to help businesses…

In order to benefit rural business owners, we encourage the Minnesota government to expand rural broadband and update the state’s transportation infrastructure. These measures align with budget proposals from Gov. Mark Dayton, who proposed spending more than two-thirds of the state’s $900 million budget surplus last week.

Dayton’s proposed $100 million rural broadband expansion could help connect rural grocers with potential customers, while better roadways could lower grocers’ delivery costs.

What’s going to happen to the reverse wireless spectrum auction on March 29?

Posted on by
Reply

There are so many sides to broadband. Today something a little different – but something that may have an impact on our future wireless bills. It’s a wonky story about the reverse spectrum auction starting on March 29 – but before I lose too many people here’s the hook from Wharton University of Pennsylvania (based on a paper written by professors at the school) …

What’s interesting about this is that to a large extent, these higher prices are going to be paid for by wireless carriers. And you might think that’s fine. Of course, ultimately, that’s going to come from wireless customers. So, that might give you some reason to pause. But what’s worrying to us as economists is that some of the TV stations that should have been sold in the auction, because they’re not viable as ongoing businesses, will actually be continued as TV stations. And there’s a real loss for society coming from that.

So here’s the deal. (I’m going to try to pull out the bare bones from the article – although it’s a pretty easy read if you have the time over the weekend!)…

As the use of mobile devices escalates, the FCC wants to reclaim spectrum – or airwaves – currently used by TV stations and reallocate them for mobile broadband. That’s the spectrum you use when you log into Facebook on your phone. Specifically, the FCC wants to reclaim so-called low band spectrum in the 600 MHz range — this is valuable spectrum that can travel over long distances and penetrate buildings better.

On March 29, the FCC will start an incentive auction in which it will buy spectrum licenses from TV stations and resell them to mobile phone carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, as well as other buyers. It’s a first-of-its-kind auction in which TV stations put up spectrum licenses for sale in a reverse auction and buyers concurrently bid for them in a forward auction.

There are about 8,500 operating TV stations that own spectrum licenses, and there are 2,166 broadcast licenses eligible for the auction. Each license is for a 6 MHz block of spectrum covering a particular geographic area for over-the-air TV signals. TV stations that choose to sell their licenses can do three things: go off the air, relocate or share spectrum with another station.

However, Wharton research shows that there is a way for some TV stations to take advantage of the system — and increase their sales gains by potentially billions of dollars. While the FCC rolled out a very well-designed auction, there is a feature that could substantially benefit owners of multiple TV stations, such as private equity firms, according to the research paper, “Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction.”

This is a big auction – like $45 billion spent by wireless carriers big! The wireless providers will be bidding to buy spectrum from TV stations. The TV stations have a cheat sheet that gives them an idea of what their spectrum/company is worth based on various criteria. The bidders do not have this info. It sounds like it was built with the idea that most owners have one station. It’s a heck of an opportunity for folks who own more…

The auction is very cleverly designed. It has a lot of very attractive properties. For example, TV license holders are shown a personalized price, basically based on the desirability of their license to this overall process. … And if you just own a single TV broadcast license, this mechanism is great. … You’re shown a price. And you should stay in this auction as long as the price shown to you is above your true value of this broadcast asset.

The complication arises when you have owners of multiple broadcast licenses. All of a sudden, you might have a weird incentive. You might say, “Actually, I’m going to pull one of my licenses out of the auction, because that might raise the closing price and increase my total proceeds from this whole process.” And so the point of this paper was to assess the extent to which firms might be able to do that as they acquire multiple licenses going into the auction.

In some markets it’s apparently a nonissue; in other areas license holders can increase bids by a third to a half. Billions of dollars.

To some degree, this is all speculation – but educated speculation. Just one moving piece to the whole broadband picture.

Could changes in FCC’s Lifeline help students?

Posted on by
Reply

Diverse Issues in Higher Education recently ran an article on changes to Lifeline subsidies. Those changes can be confusing, so despite the fact that I’ve posted on this before I’m going to borrow from their explanation of the changes…

The FCC is expected to vote on March 31 on a plan to modernize the Lifeline program by allowing its users to apply their $9.25 per month support to stand-alone broadband service as well as bundled voice and data service packages.

Among other things, the plan calls for phasing in broadband service starting at 500 MB per month of 3G data, increasing to 2 GB per month by the end of 2018, according to an FCC draft proposal.

For perspective, with 500 MB a person could spend 21 hours surfing the web. With 2GB, a person could spend 89 hours surfing the web, according to an online mobile phone data calculator.

They recognize the potential limitations..

However, questions remain about the quality and speed of any broadband service that might be provided under Lifeline, as well as whether mobile devices can really perform all the academic and college-related tasks that supporters hope it can.

“Lifeline was designed as a subsidy for telecommunications service only — not the equipment used to connect to those services,” said Josh Stager, policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute.

And recognize that this is just one piece to the puzzle…

“Lifeline isn’t the silver bullet that can single-handedly close the digital divide,” Stager said. “It’s going to take a multi-pronged approach, of which Lifeline is just one strategy.”

Madison MN looks at fiber options – a case study of the underserved

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to everyone who has shared information from the recent broadband meeting in Madison MN. Just a quick reminder – Madison is the county seat for Lac qui Parle County. LqP has FTTH through an ARRA-funded project. Madison was not included in that upgrade because their broadband access back when the grant application was written (2008) was too fast to merit the award so they were left out.

Madison has been used as an example of what can happen when funding goes to “unserved” areas only – leaving “underserved” areas in a precarious position. Their broadband access isn’t bad enough to fix today – but it’s not really good enough for the future either.

Currently there’s an effort to upgrade the Madison network to meet the same speeds as the neighbors. The Western Guard wrote about the meeting…

A group of approximately 25 people attended an informational meeting regarding fiber to the premises in the city of Madison. During the March 14 Madison City Council meeting at city hall, the Fiber to the Premises Committee, made up of Terry Ocana, John Witte, City Manager Val Halvorson, city councilmen Maynard Meyer and Adam Conroy, and Lac qui Parle County EDA Director Pam Ellison, answered questions and provided information on hopes of bringing high speed fiber optic internet to town.

The folks in Madison have kindly share the PPT with me. It is dense but good…

I have to borrow from the Western Guard what I think is a salient point…

Ocana, who is the Big Stone County technology coordinator but lives just north of Madison, gave a powerpoint presentation that laid out the need for fiber optic internet moving towards the future.

Ocana gave examples of historical technology progress in the area, such as the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which used $750,000 (an equivalent of $12.3 million today) in federal loans to bring electricity to all properties; the Rural Telephone Administration Act of 1949, bringing phone lines to rural homes; and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1944, constructing national highways and secondary roads. All of these projects utilized governmental funding.

Their next steps are to ask residents to fill out a survey (market research), which folks will be receiving through the mail.

I have done a lot of work in Madison in the last 8 years or so. The people there are great – and my cell phone doesn’t work – except on the hills. Tough situation for the local businesses and residents.

Comcast explains why 4/1 may not be enough for your home business

Posted on by
1

Comcast Trends recently posted an article promoting broadband speeds of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up for their business clients. Comcast tends to serve urban, not rural areas, but it sure seems like if this is true for businesses in Minneapolis, that businesses in other parts of Minnesota should have access too to stay competitive.

Here are their seven reasons to upgrade to broadband, which I have abridged liberally…

Speed Boosts Efficiency
We’ve all spent time waiting for pages to load, and time is money. If you or your employees spend half of each day online doing research, accessing systems or dealing with customers and vendors, that amounts to 4 hours per day. If 5 percent of that time is wasted due to slowness, over a year’s time that’s 50 hours per employee. If 10 percent is wasted, it’s 100 hours per year per employee. Add it up and it could be many thousands of dollars lost.

Speed Alleviates Stress One estimate from the World Health Organization suggests that stress costs American businesses $300 billion annually. Why add to your own or your employees’ stress level with a tediously slow Internet connection? For that matter, why add to your customers’ stress? The last thing a customer wants when he calls your company is to sit there frustrated, waiting for a resolution to his problem, while you explain that your computer is slow today.

Broadband Supports Multiple Users
When you have multiple users your Internet speed can slow down, because the total bandwidth is shared between them all. This is especially noticeable if you use wireless, and with any connection that’s slower to begin with.

The Federal Communications Commission has established minimum guidelines for download speeds per user and device. For example, each user requires a minimum of between 0.5 and 1 Megabits per second, or Mbps, of download speed for browsing a Web page. Email requires another 0.5 Mbps per user. Video conferencing requires a minimum of 1 Mbps per user. Other activities require more.
For each concurrent user, and each concurrent device and activity, demands on your connection quickly add up. If your business is trying to get work done with multiple users doing multiple activities and running multiple devices at the same time, a slow speed of say 10 or 15 mbps won’t be nearly enough.
Keep in mind, the FCC Guidelines are just minimums. As the FCC notes, “Additional speed may enhance performance.”

Fast Internet Makes Using the Cloud Easier
Many business and tech writers have touted the business benefits of using the cloud. But cloud computing means constant uploading and downloading, and that can take time, especially if you have a slow Internet connection.

In fact, a white paper from Integra says, “45% of organizations cite bandwidth requirements as a barrier to cloud adoption.” By now you know the solution to that problem.

Broadband Means Faster Uploads You usually hear about download speed when Internet plans are discussed or advertised. But it also matters how fast you can upload your files, photos, and other data for all the same reasons mentioned so far (efficiency, less stress, ability to handle more users, easier use of cloud computing). Until this year a service could be called broadband with just 1 Mbps upload speed, but that can be pretty slow. Now the standard is a minimum of 3 Mbps per second upload, and most business plans are substantially more than that.

High Speed Reduces Costs
The efficiency gained from high speed Internet can reduce expenses by more than the added cost, but there’s other more direct savings possible.

Consider Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a technology that lets you make phone calls using the Internet, for much less than analog lines. Grant Thornton Inc. saved $800,000 the first year it used a VoIP setup. The company has 2,800 employees nationwide, so the savings may be more modest for your own business.

And then there is the catch… You guessed it; VoIP generally requires a broadband connection

Broadband Makes for Better Collaboration
Broadband enables you to use more electronic technologies in general. And that translates into revenue growth. According to testimony by Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary for Communications, Lawrence Strickling, before the House Small Business Committee, “A SNG study of 600 North Carolina businesses demonstrated a direct correlation between revenue growth and the use of broadband technologies (what SNG terms “e-solutions”).” Companies adopting broadband-enabled technologies experienced between 27 and 31 percent revenue increases.

Bill Coleman for policymakers – we must invest in broadband

Posted on by
Reply

bill rightEarlier this week I was invited to testify before the House Committee on Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance committee, but didn’t get the chance to say what I had prepared. Here is the testimony I prepared and would have delivered.

Good afternoon Chairman Garafalo and members of the committee.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today.

I will quickly address three related topics:

• The difference between broadband goals, broadband standards and the broadband marketplace
• The impact of the CAF2 program on rural places, and
• The need for rural communities to be able ensure their own broadband future.

Regarding goals, standards and the marketplace.

In 2010, the federal government set a 100 Mb goal which is still in place. In comparison, since 2008, the FCC standard for broadband has accelerated from 768k to 25 Mb, a thirty-fold increase in eight years.

The broadband task force is also recommending a 100 Mb by 2026 goal as well as an interim goal of 25/3 by 2022. If the 25/3 goal is adopted, Minnesota would gain notoriety as the only state that has adopted a lower upload speed goal in 2016 than they had in 2010.

In comparison, the marketplace is moving faster than either the federal or state goal. Companies are deploying Gigabit and greater broadband in both the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. This change is enabled by new technology of course, and in the Twin Cities by some level of competition.

In rural Minnesota, cooperatives like Paul Bunyan, CTC and others offer Gigabit speeds. Hiawatha Broadband and Midcontinent do as well. So Gigabit broadband is not just a Google dream – it is a reality. Those communities without Gb services know that they are falling behind in economic competitiveness and quality of life.

The 25 Mb FCC broadband standard is of little use as a current benchmark or goal, especially for state broadband funding. Looking forward, if we were to apply the same growth rate to the FCC standard over the next 8 years as the previous eight, the 2024 FCC standard would be 750 Mb.

CAF2 is a program that will provide band-aid improvements to broadband services in some rural areas, but alone, will not provide a ubiquitous long-term solution. To quote Jason Dale, president of Cooperative Network Services, a collaborative of Minnesota’s Gb providing cooperatives, “these large companies will deploy essentially the same technology as was deployed by broadband cooperatives 15 years ago, probably causing them to fall even further behind the current rate of change.”
While DSL can provide speeds in excess of 25 Mb to homes within a half-mile of the electronics, those living two miles away will see their speeds top out at 10 Mb or worse, depending on the condition of the copper network.

Based on these incumbent providers’ investment track record, the CAF2 program may be these area’s last significant technology upgrade for a generation. Can you imagine the shortcomings of a 10/1 Mb connection in 2022? And areas ineligible for CAF2 may not get any improvements at all.

The right of first refusal concept is comparable to an arranged marriage, a concept almost as old and out-of-date as DSL technology. Many rural Minnesota communities have experienced the reluctance or outright refusal of these incumbents to invest in greater Minnesota over the past decade or longer. Efforts to develop public-private partnerships have been rebuffed before even mildly serious discussions could take place.

Communities must to be able to select their partners based on shared mutual interests and goals. Considerations would include the quality of the planned infrastructure, its long-term economic development potential and the reliability of the partner over the long term.

The ability of a rural community or county to create a partnership with a provider to deploy a world-class, Gb capable network should be encouraged, not prohibited. Monopoly providers delivering inadequate services should not be protected from competition.

A world-class broadband network is defined by more than just speed delivered to a particular location. Communities must ask: Does the network go everywhere and connect everyone? Do we have the networks that tech savvy people in all industries desire and require? Can the local economic developer reach a provider decision-maker while working with prospective economic development prospects? Are those who live in outlying areas – farmers, doctors, entrepreneurs, retirees, tele-workers, students, and vacationers – able to connect to do what they want and need to do to enjoy a vibrant rural lifestyle?

Because those that can’t connect will go elsewhere to live and work. And others will never come. As greater Minnesota works on another significant challenge – to grow and maintain a skilled workforce – those places without broadband are already at a significant disadvantage.

I encourage you to set aspirational broadband goals, like the 100 Mb goal that was adopted by the task force. It would then seem smart to require that all state funds be used only to reach the 100 Mb goal and not the current 25/3 FCC standard. Ensure that state funds are well used and create a long-term platform for rural vitality.

Thank you.

Bernadine Joselyn for policymakers – we must invest in broadband

Posted on by
Reply

BernadineI had been invited to testify yesterday before the House Committee on Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance committee, but didn’t get the chance. Here is the testimony I prepared and would have delivered.

Good Afternoon Chairman Garofalo and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

My name is Bernadine Joselyn. I am the Director of Public Policy & Engagement for Blandin Foundation, Minnesota’s largest rural-based philanthropy. The Foundation has been invited as technical experts to offer our opinion as to the strengths and weaknesses of proposed legislation under discussion by this committee.

Our mission is to strengthen rural Minnesota communities – a goal I am confident each and every one of you share.

So in a sense I speak to you today as your colleague – as someone who, like you, is dedicated to promoting the economic vitality of Minnesota’s rural communities.

My job at Blandin, and before you today, is to help ensure that rural perspectives are well represented in policy debate that impacts rural, a hat I also wear as a member of the Governor’s Broadband Taskforce.

We’re not the “Broadband Foundation,” and so why, you may ask, has Blandin dedicated so many resources over the past dozen years or so, to rural community broadband.

That’s because we have come to recognize that broadband is critical to everything we care about as a foundation – prosperous rural communities, opportunity for all, and vibrant civic life.
Unfortunately, in Minnesota the rural / urban divide in broadband quality and availability is all too real: 99% of urban areas have access to broadband speeds of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, while only 47% of rural areas, including many tribal areas, have such access.

This state of affairs is hurting Minnesota. Without broadband infrastructure, rural communities cannot compete. Innovation can happen anywhere there is world-class broadband. If we want to preserve a “rural option” in Minnesota – we need border-to-border broadband. All Minnesotans benefit when rural communities are vital and thriving.

So far, we’re not doing very well. In fact, Minnesota did not reach the goals you set for 2015 of border to border access to 10 to 20 Mbps download/5 to 10 Mbps upload.

I know you hear a lot from the telecom industry. By contrast, rural community voices are disaggregated. And while every sector – from education to health care to public safety to business – is better with broadband, it can be challenging for rural broadband advocates to counter the industry’s message that the free market alone will meet community needs.

This year, however, the chorus of need has been reflected in a broadband vision for Minnesota. It reads:

Everyone in Minnesota will be able to use convenient, affordable world-class broadband networks that enable us to survive and thrive in our communities and across the globe.

This vision has been endorsed by dozens and dozens of entities who care about Minnesota communities – including the League of Minnesota Cities, Association of Minnesota Counties, the Association of Minnesota Townships, all of the state’s Regional Economic Development Commissions, MN Rural Education Association, and many many others. Among the 16 individual counties who have adopted this vision are some represented by members of this committee, including Kandiyohi, St. Louis, Yellow Medicine, Lac qui Parle, Redwood, and Sherburne.

To achieve this vision, MN must invest.

The Governor’s broadband task force has estimated that to meet the 2015 goals would require up to $3 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Minnesota has fallen in national rankings of broadband availability and speeds as other states do more to encourage broadband investment. Minnesota can do better.

Rural Minnesota communities are ready with quality fundable projects:
Last year, the Office of Broadband Development received 44 grant applications for a total funding request of $29 million. It was able to award only $11 million in grants, leaving $18 million worth of projects unfunded.

Pretty much everyone agrees the OBD has done an excellent job administering the fund and selecting projects worthy of public investment. I caution you not to overburden the office with onerous new administrative requirements like incumbent right of first refusal. The fund is working well. It’s not broken – it just needs more money.

$100 million dollar fund is not enough to get the job done, but it is a good start.

Before closing, I’d like to say just a few words about Connect America Fund (CAF2) and its impact on Minnesota broadband needs.

Do not fall into the trap of believing that the Connect America Fund (CAF2) dollars can substitute for the investment Minnesota must make.

The CAF2 standard of 10/1 is not world class. It is second class. Not good enough today; definitely not good enough for tomorrow.

The same is true for any proposal allowing public funding of wireless networks at 10/1 upload/download speeds. Public funding should support networks that are scalable for the future.

None of us would not be satisfied with new sewage treatment facilities that do not meet current federal standards; why would we be happy with federally-subsidized networks that don’t meet current broadband standards and fall far short of where technology is going?

It is also important to keep in mind that it is the upload speed that delivers economic development. Download speeds are important for streaming Netflixs; upload speeds are needed to generate economic prosperity. Download speeds are for consumers; upload speeds are what matters for producers and entrepreneurs. My husband runs an internet business from our rural home, and upload is what matters to him.

And finally, also beware of the myth that wireless is good enough. That wireless is the future.

In fact, our broadband future is tied to investment in fixed networks. Fiber is the foundation of all wireless technology. Wireless infrastructure without fiber backbone is like airplanes without airports.

On behalf of Minnesota’s rural communities, I urge you to make the investments necessary for Minnesota to be “above average.” Fund the fund.

Don’t fall for the line that CAF2 is the answer, and neither is wireless without fiber backbone.

Thank you.

Bernadine Joselyn
Director, Public Policy & Engagement
Blandin Foundation

2015 10/5
2022 25/3 (FCC definition)
2026 100/20