A quick reminder for folks, I will borrow from NESC’s description of their project- adding that they received ARRA funding…

The Northeast Middle Mile Fiber Project will make broadband services viable for a vast geographic region, creating an initial backbone that will serve hundreds of sites along 915 miles of fiber within eight counties including St. Louis, Lake, Cook, Koochiching, Carlton, Pine, Itasca, and Aitkin. A number of anchor institutions will participate in the Project including state and municipal agencies, the Arrowhead Library System, SISU Medical System, Minnesota Association of Mental Health Programs, and twenty-eight public school districts. Overall, the project will impact 613,092 residents, 244,574 households, thousands of businesses and governmental agencies and 35,855 public school students from across Northeast Minnesota.

And now a couple of highlights from the presentation…

• 415 miles constructed in 2011 – including the following areas – Built into communities within Carlton, Lake & St. Louis County including: Aurora, Carlton, Cloquet, Cromwell, Duluth, Ely, Thomson, Floodwood, Hermantown, Hibbing, Moose Lake, Mountain Iron, Proctor, Silver Bay, Soudan, Two Harbors, Virginia, Willow River, Wrenshall, Gilbert, Eveleth Eveleth Tower Barnum , To we r, Barnum.
• Areas slated for constructed in 2012 – McGregor, Orr, International Falls, Cotton, Chisholm, Buhl, Keewatin, Cook, New Duluth, Gary, Biwabik, Nett Lake, Fond du Lac, North Shore Communities (Grand Marais, Grand Portage, Portage, Lutsen, Schroeder Tofte).

They also look at what is means to be connected – from a community perspective. I think the presentation is very good – even if you’re not in Northeast MN – although the possible solution they elaborate upon may not be available in other areas.

It was a nice look at all aspects of broadband of the community and a nice eye opener for folks who may not be using broadband, cloud computing or social media as often (or maybe as well) as the speakers. I think it will spur folks to go home and look at how they can implement broadband tools in work, home and community.

Below are the presentations. [Added 10/5/2011 - you can access materials from the event online too. http://www.northlandconnection.com/uploads/BroadbandNetworkForumPacket2.pdf]

(Danna used a great tool called Prezi – fun to see, great for the presentation but tougher to embed in the blog. Please click to view her presentation.)

And here are the questions, which I think are always valuable. (As fun to see what folks ask as to hear the answers.)

• What speed do you need for folks to work from home?
• Don’t know minimum. Clearly need more than dialup.
• Do your work at home employees need to be near the office (to United Health Care)?
• Try to keep folks within a 60 miles radius. (Although we have exceptions – especially from folks who have moved.)
• Is there a single source online to find your speed based at an address?
• Connect Minnesota maps are pretty good – they will show providers anyways. The problem with the map is that they’re not very granular – although they go to census track in MN.
• When will the Middle Mile project be complete?
• The NESC is under construction and should be done next year – although bulk may be done by the end of the year.
• Mediacom seems to be the only game in town now, will Mediacom get on board for Last Mile?
• NESC is working with existing carriers. Frontier is the first provider to sign on.
• We really focus on Middle Mile. We provide fast, not-shared broadband but not to the Last Mile. The questions of service to the home will be up to the individual commercial provider.
• Is there a technology being developed to offer wireless to a whole city?
• Minneapolis has a private sector partners. The city prepaid for services to help that happen. It’s a tough technology – because it often comes down to the siding of the house for quality.

I did a little Tweeting during the event if you want a super quick look at the event.

Interesting panel at NATOA discussion the open internet and net neutrality.  Google thinks that Net Neutrality is essential because it means that the user is in control.  Richard Bennett of ITIF says that this is easy to say, hard to regulate.  The discussion is now moving towards the new FCC rules announced yesterday.

It is City of Eagan’s intent to obtain and own a fiber cable plant to be used for city purposes, wholesale access to telecommunications providers, or open access to telecommunications providers within the corporate limits of the City of Eagan.

They are looking for proposals by September 13, 2011. The contract will be awarded September 20 and the project should be completed by November 18. You can get all of the details on the RFP. Good luck to those who will propose!

Both Senators Franken and Klobuchar attended. I caught some video of the event…

Work begins today [July 26] on a new broadband network in Minnesota designed to connect anchor institutions like public offices, schools and libraries. The Greater Minnesota Broadband Collaborative Project is a $24 million broadband network that will provide greater access throughout the state. Enventis, a subsidiary of HickoryTech, will be managing the build out. The project will extend a middle-mile network to anchor institutions and provide public offices and agencies with a high capacity network.

Eventis started the working on the network in July in Superior, Wisconsin and will extend fiber over nearly 430 miles throughout northern Minnesota. Along with anchor institutions and public offices residents of the area will have the opportunity to subscribe to broadband access.

We wrote a little more about the Greater Minnesota Broadband Collaborative Project when they received funding…

Enventis Telecom – This approximately $16.8 million award, with more than $7.2 million in matching contributions, will allow Enventis Telecom to offer affordable middle-mile broadband service in Minnesota. The project plans to directly connect 70 community institutions to broadband. As many as 350,400 people stand to benefit as do 28,000 businesses. Enventis estimates that the project will create more than 250 jobs.

I’ve been paying more attention to that jobs factor lately. I’ll be eager to see how many jobs are created.

The fiber ring will be nearly 89 miles long, run directly through all 11 cities in the county, and have an additional 32 miles of lateral connections connecting over 80 public partners. These partners represent city, county and township governments, fire departments, schools, public safety towers and law enforcement agencies as well as a regional healthcare center.

The ring is an open network, which will enable private service providers to offer broadband services on this network to homes and businesses.

The project seems to be rolling along. Last week, they issued a request for bid for the construction portion of the project. For folks who might be interested they are offering a few training/demonstration events in the next few weeks that will help. The bids are due April 5, 2011.

The Carver County Fiber web site is a wealth of information! There was one paragraph that caught my eye…

Carver County currently spends about $290,000 a year to lease T1 copper lines and will result in a 5 year payback relative to the $1.5 million in county match funds. Once the ring is complete, Carver County will realize a reduction in annual expenses and contain future costs.

Last week at the TISP meeting we heard from three counties who are working on countywide broadband. Hard numbers, like the cost of T1 lines, help me put in perspective the definition of profitable. Sometime it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you save!

Lake County could not reach agreement on a permanent contract with National Public Broadband, its consultant firm for nearly two years. The two sides battled for nearly two months and couldn’t resolve differences on bonus payments and the county’s option to fire NPB without cause and without penalty. The negotiations had bogged down work on the actual project, Commissioner Paul Bergman said, and the board wanted a fresh start.

The project is being funded by federal money approved in September and handled by the Rural Utilities Service branch of the Department of Agriculture.

Board members said it was the Rural Utilities Service that forced its hand in making changes in the approach to the fiber project, including the third surprise resolution passed by the County Board on Tuesday — authorization to use $3.5 million in public money for the project.

The decision to use public funding had to have been difficult, given they had been saying that the project would not require public financing. But it sounds as if the RUS required it. I think the public funding will help the project – there’s nothing like a little skin in the game to increase interest and motivation. Christopher Mitchell from Institute for Local Self Reliance seems to agree…

The County had long maintained that no public money would be used. However, most people will likely not care as long as the project keeps its promise to deliver fast, reliable, and affordable broadband to the community. This is the need — and people need to stay focused on achieving this goal.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. The ARRA funding went to the county. So the project is still on, they are just looking to reshuffle the deck a little. Perhaps they will get a hand that better suits them in the next few weeks. This project along with fiber being in stalled in the area by Arrowhead Electric, as well as Duluth’s bid for the Google Gig and Cook County’s ongoing use of technology could really be a game changer for NE Minnesota. So I hope that Lake County will find a solution that works.

With staking of the fiber network completed and plans and specifications currently being drawn up, the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services Board turned its attention to marketing during a meeting last Thursday.

John Schultz, who is working with the SWMBG, provided me with a few more details on the latest meeting

1. There was a long discussion on what community events and groups we should be targeting
2. We spoke about both traditional media and on-line media to reach our perspective customer base; SMBS will be utilizing a combination of both
3. We are on the time to go directly to the customer base-we need to alert them that the incumbents will be starting (and are already) starting to run the typical multiple year contract campaigns to lock customers into their service.
4. Everything is on target, looking at beginning of spring construction build.

The Age echoed many other news sources when they said…

THE national broadband network has cleared another key hurdle, after Parliament signed off on major changes designed to help consumers by splitting Telstra’s retail and wholesale arms.

The same article goes on to say that plans are in the works to block the path, while other promising to block the blocks – but a step has been taken. Ars Technica gives a brief summary of the route to deploying the national broadband plan…

The government let go of Telstra in the late 1990s. But, over the coming eight years, Australia’s taxpayers will fork over AUS$43 billion (US$38 billion) to build a “world-class broadband infrastructure.” The project will deliver fiber-to-the-home to 93 percent of all households. We’re talking open access and wholesale only. Every ISP will be able to tap into the system.

I hear people claim that the US can’t commit to ubiquitous broadband because we’re so big with so many areas of low population density. I know that size and population density matter – but I think Australia is showing that where there’s a will, there’s a way. As you may recall, access to broadband was a big issue in the elections this year. The people wanted broadband and now the government is stepping in to make it happen. Unfortunately surveys are showing the opposite in the US. Pew recently reported that more than half of Americans polled say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority. Even Blandin Foundation’s own Rural Pulse survey indicated that…

Fifty three percent of rural residents strongly agreed and 33 percent somewhat agreed that their community has adequate access to technology, with 13 percent disagreeing with that belief.

And numerous surveys have indicated that one of the top reasons people don’t have home broadband is because they don’t see a value. It’s an indicator that we need to convince people of the value of broadband – because as Australia has demonstrated – it can be (or at least is being) done.