Category Archives: Rural

President Biden talks about rural investment on his visit to Southern MN

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MSN reports…

President Joe Biden was in southern Minnesota yesterday to highlight federal investments for rural America.

Biden visited a farm near Northfield to discuss funding from recent packages such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, with the latter focusing on climate projects and health care assistance.

For agriculture, the administration said there is new funding for farmers to take advantage of climate-friendly practices, such as nutrient management, with other provisions designed to create market fairness.

Investment is being made in rural broadband…

Meanwhile, $65 billion has been set aside within the infrastructure law to boost access to high-speed internet, with the hopes of enhancing efforts to close broadband gaps in rural areas.

Common complaints about BEAD in Broadband Breakfast

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Broadband Breakfast posts an article from Lori Adams, cu vice president of broadband policy and funding strategy for Nokia, on whether/how rural providers can prepare to apply for BEAD. With years of MN State Broadband funds, I feel like Minnesota providers are in a little different position than providers in other states. (Although BEAD will certainly be different.) Yet, I found the section on complaints about BEAD to be interesting…

Common complaints about BEAD

The first is that the states have already made up their mind who they want to partner with for BEAD. To put it bluntly, this is completely false.

The money is not predetermined to go to a single carrier or group of providers. This will be a competitive process in every state. Scoring will determine which applicants are successful. The higher an applicant scores, the more likely it is an applicant will win. How a state defines the project areas to be “bid on” for BEAD may favor certain types of providers, but nothing is pre-determined. In fact, states are actively looking for rural providers to engage and participate in the process.

The next complaint is centered on the BEAD rules. Often we hear – “well, it depends on what the rules are in the states.” At this juncture, most of the rules are determined and there is more than enough information available to help inform decisions.

For example, The National Telecommunications and Information Administration first released their Notice of Funding Opportunity in May of 2022, and nearly 90% of the program rules are the same in every state.

Additionally, every state has released its Initial Proposal Volume 2, outlining the specific program rules for that state. Almost all the states are now moving into the mapping challenge processes. This means that almost all the critical details are available to help providers start preparing an application now.

Others believe that BEAD is too complex, and it is too early to think about it. Yes, BEAD is complex. It is arguably the most complicated broadband funding program we have ever seen. But it’s complex for everyone, and the longer an applicant waits to prepare, the more complex it will become.

In most cases, providers will need at least three to four months to prepare an application. For example, it’s a requirement in every state that a professional engineer (PE) stamps the network designs, budgets and other documentation that must be submitted as part of a BEAD application.

Finding and contracting with a PE takes time, as does the preparation of the necessary the documentation. Once a grant window opens, it will most likely be too late to find a PE and have this work completed.

There is also the belief that BEAD costs too much and that matching funds are too high. Yes, there is a minimum match requirement of 25%, and an applicant may very well need to put in more money to be competitive. However, other federal grant and loan programs including those through USDA’s Rural Utilities Service range from a 50% to 100% subsidy.

State and federal programs such as the Capital Projects Fund (CPF) programs contain a 20-50% matching requirement, and we are hearing from states that these programs are up to five times oversubscribed, with matching funds exceeding 50% in some cases.

For BEAD, states will consider waiving the match for the highest cost area, and private equity is clamoring at the bit to assist with financing. While cost is a factor, someone will figure out how to make this work.

The final excuse repeated is that other funding programs are preferred. Well, if the mandate of BEAD to reach every single unserved and underserved location is achieved, those future funding programs may very well disappear. As it is, ReConnect through USDA is funding a fraction of the money that is available for BEAD. Further, it’s a risk to hedge your bet that there will be future unserved locations in your service area qualified to be funded through these other programs.

FCC reports on broadband adoption in States and Counties

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The FCC reports on the status of broadband access…

Access to affordable, reliable broadband is essential to full participation in modern life. Consumers rely on both their fixed and mobile connections to work, learn, access health care, and connect with each other. Today, we issue this Report pursuant to our obligation under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, concluding our inquiry into whether “advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”1 We find that more work remains to ensure that all Americans have access to advanced telecommunications capability.

They are using a new resource…

This Report also represents an important milestone with regard to the data that we use for our inquiry. For the first time, we use data from the Commission’s Broadband Data Collection (BDC). The Commission’s Section 706 Reports have for many years relied primarily on the FCC Form 477 deployment data to evaluate consumers’ broadband options for fixed and mobile services.3 The BDC data, unavailable for past section 706 inquiries, represent significant improvements over FCC Form 477 data, through the use of more precise location-by-location fixed data, mobile data based on standardized parameters, and the Commission’s ability to improve the data through public challenge processes and conducting verifications and audits of provider-reported data.

Based on our evaluation of the data, we find that our universal service goals for section 706 have not been met, and we therefore conclude that advanced telecommunications capability is not being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. Most significantly, at present, 100/20 Mbps terrestrial fixed broadband service4 has not been physically deployed to approximately 7% of Americans. Rural areas and Tribal lands significantly trail more urban areas, with approximately 28% of people living in rural areas and approximately 23% of people living on Tribal lands lacking access to 100/20 Mbps fixed broadband services.5 While we expect the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and other federal and state programs will narrow these divides in the coming years, at this time, we find that these physical deployment shortcomings are sufficient to warrant a negative finding under section 706 before we even begin to consider our other universal service goals, for which we hope to have more comprehensive data available in future inquiries.

At a high level here’s how Minnesota stands:

  25/3 Mbps 100/20 Mbps 940/500 Mbps
Including Fixed Wireless 76.5% 32.1% 8.3%
Excluding Fixed Wireless 76.1% 32.3% 8.3%

Here are the stats by county

  Pop Evaluated % with fixed 100/20 % with mobile 5G-NR 35/3 % with fixed & mobile Pop density Per capita income
Minnesota 5,717,184 94.3% 88.8% 85.4% 71.8 $44,947
Aitkin County 16,126 69.5% 48.5% 38.5% 8.9 $32,980
Anoka County 368,864 97.5% 97.0% 94.8% 874.2 $43,106
Becker County 35,371 81.0% 49.9% 44.2% 26.9 $38,444
Beltrami County 46,799 99.2% 54.5% 54.4% 18.7 $32,055
Benton County 41,463 88.4% 94.1% 83.1% 101.6 $35,885
Big Stone County 5,144 98.9% 24.3% 24.0% 10.3 $35,797
Blue Earth County 69,631 97.0% 82.9% 80.4% 93.1 $35,182
Brown County 25,723 94.5% 72.6% 70.9% 42.1 $35,340
Carlton County 36,708 60.6% 58.8% 41.7% 42.6 $35,642
Carver County 110,034 98.9% 99.0% 98.0% 310.8 $55,216
Cass County 31,274 63.7% 55.3% 39.9% 15.5 $34,505
Chippewa County 12,284 99.1% 66.4% 65.9% 21.1 $32,772
Chisago County 57,988 76.2% 92.4% 72.4% 139.8 $41,814
Clay County 65,929 99.3% 90.1% 89.9% 63.1 $36,586
Clearwater County 8,649 99.2% 53.3% 53.0% 8.7 $31,879
Cook County 5,708 95.2% 54.0% 53.3% 3.9 $44,316
Cottonwood County 11,356 88.7% 76.6% 71.1% 17.7 $32,818
Crow Wing County 67,948 88.2% 71.0% 65.6% 68.1 $36,878
Dakota County 443,341 99.2% 99.3% 98.6% 788.1 $48,894
Dodge County 20,981 99.9% 72.1% 72.1% 47.8 $42,838
Douglas County 39,668 84.6% 56.2% 51.2% 62.3 $41,889
Faribault County 13,926 86.2% 49.2% 43.2% 19.5 $35,307
Fillmore County 21,414 86.0% 63.4% 58.6% 24.9 $35,645
Freeborn County 30,718 99.4% 70.6% 70.2% 43.4 $36,751
Goodhue County 48,013 94.0% 73.5% 71.7% 63.5 $40,087
Grant County 6,136 82.2% 39.1% 36.7% 11.2 $36,750
Hennepin County 1,260,121 99.3% 99.8% 99.1% 2,274.4 $55,199
Houston County 18,800 84.5% 49.1% 46.9% 34.1 $39,340
Hubbard County 21,960 92.3% 56.2% 52.7% 23.7 $36,944
Isanti County 42,727 59.7% 83.9% 56.8% 98.1 $38,609
Itasca County 45,205 92.8% 62.3% 59.4% 16.9 $34,528
Jackson County 9,893 95.5% 56.6% 54.1% 14.1 $37,818
Kanabec County 16,463 27.4% 59.8% 25.1% 31.6 $33,805
Kandiyohi County 43,839 95.7% 85.8% 82.5% 55.0 $35,814
Kittson County 4,059 95.2% 34.0% 33.9% 3.7 $35,565
Koochiching County 11,844 83.1% 52.0% 49.2% 3.8 $36,515
Lac qui Parle County 6,689 100.0% 43.7% 43.7% 8.7 $37,520
Lake County 10,939 90.6% 75.2% 71.5% 5.2 $39,930
Lake of the Woods County 3,871 80.9% 57.6% 53.3% 3.0 $35,308
Le Sueur County 29,153 98.5% 78.0% 77.3% 65.0 $41,400
Lincoln County 5,580 99.1% 41.6% 41.1% 10.4 $35,638
Lyon County 25,262 99.9% 78.0% 77.9% 35.4 $35,256
Mahnomen County 5,328 71.3% 38.0% 32.8% 9.6 $24,710
Marshall County 8,861 94.6% 45.3% 44.7% 5.0 $35,920
Martin County 19,650 98.6% 62.1% 61.9% 27.6 $35,152
McLeod County 36,714 97.5% 97.2% 95.0% 74.7 $39,361
Meeker County 23,496 92.9% 80.5% 75.5% 38.6 $37,233
Mille Lacs County 27,280 81.7% 76.8% 65.9% 47.7 $33,933
Morrison County 34,246 82.0% 63.8% 54.0% 30.4 $34,269
Mower County 40,140 98.7% 75.6% 75.4% 56.4 $33,921
Murray County 8,060 98.8% 61.3% 60.8% 11.4 $38,783
Nicollet County 34,441 93.0% 83.4% 79.2% 76.8 $41,658
Nobles County 21,947 96.0% 79.7% 77.3% 30.7 $29,786
Norman County 6,377 87.7% 50.2% 46.9% 7.3 $36,245
Olmsted County 164,020 99.1% 97.5% 96.9% 251.0 $49,799
Otter Tail County 60,519 75.9% 49.4% 41.8% 30.7 $37,202
Pennington County 13,845 98.7% 75.0% 74.4% 22.5 $37,342
Pine County 29,446 48.8% 57.7% 37.6% 20.9 $32,335
Pipestone County 9,355 99.0% 59.8% 59.5% 20.1 $34,973
Polk County 30,731 99.0% 66.9% 66.7% 15.6 $34,273
Pope County 11,431 91.6% 35.0% 32.7% 17.1 $38,905
Ramsey County 536,413 99.6% 99.9% 99.5% 3,523.3 $43,203
Red Lake County 3,874 94.7% 62.2% 61.7% 9.0 $35,198
Redwood County 15,361 80.5% 54.7% 49.8% 17.5 $33,175
Renville County 14,525 97.9% 61.4% 60.7% 14.8 $34,554
Rice County 67,693 96.4% 93.5% 90.5% 136.5 $37,050
Rock County 9,537 97.7% 22.9% 21.9% 19.8 $38,472
Roseau County 15,292 94.8% 61.3% 58.8% 9.1 $36,125
Scott County 154,520 98.9% 99.2% 98.2% 433.7 $51,259
Sherburne County 100,824 89.1% 95.7% 85.9% 232.9 $41,412
Sibley County 14,955 94.6% 73.1% 71.3% 25.4 $37,919
St. Louis County 199,532 79.2% 86.3% 74.0% 31.9 $37,850
Stearns County 160,405 92.5% 95.3% 88.7% 119.5 $36,087
Steele County 37,398 100.0% 68.8% 68.8% 87.0 $40,146
Stevens County 9,637 98.2% 24.3% 24.2% 17.1 $38,425
Swift County 9,755 99.2% 27.4% 27.2% 13.1 $35,595
Todd County 25,538 63.9% 52.8% 39.9% 27.0 $30,812
Traverse County 3,275 82.3% 45.5% 43.3% 5.7 $36,023
Wabasha County 21,658 93.7% 57.9% 57.3% 41.4 $40,471
Wadena County 14,307 99.3% 36.9% 36.8% 26.7 $28,011
Waseca County 18,893 100.0% 77.5% 77.5% 44.6 $35,814
Washington County 275,912 94.8% 97.7% 93.2% 717.2 $54,418
Watonwan County 11,075 100.0% 76.0% 76.0% 25.5 $34,363
Wilkin County 6,350 84.5% 63.6% 58.8% 8.5 $38,317
Winona County 49,478 97.1% 51.7% 51.1% 79.0 $34,889
Wright County 148,003 86.9% 98.8% 86.5% 223.9 $43,067
Yellow Medicine County 9,486 99.5% 56.3% 56.0% 12.5 $36,737
             
Tribal Areas 39,095 78.7% 41.3% 31.7%    

And a deep dive into state stats…

Continue reading →

Broadband is good for people and the climate reports West Central Initiate in West Central Minnesota

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Yale Climate Connections reports…

Mark Kaelke is with the West Central Initiative, a community foundation that serves nine counties in west-central Minnesota.

His group advocates for better access to broadband internet in the region. He says broadband could benefit people and the climate.

That’s because rural residents often commute a long distance to go to work, visit the doctor, or spend time with friends. And all that driving emits carbon pollution.

Kaelke: “Our region, because of the distances between communities and services, we have a very high vehicle miles traveled rate.”

With reliable high-speed internet, more residents could take advantage of telehealth appointments and remote work opportunities.

So Kaelke says improving access to broadband internet in rural areas could help reduce carbon pollution from vehicles and improve people’s quality of life.

Investing in Rural Mental Health means investing in broadband

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MinnPost has an article today on a mental health ministry on the Iron Range…

The Hope and Trust Mental Health Support Ministry at Our Lady of Hope is in its infancy, but Dagger and the team of facilitators gathered on the seasonably cold late January night see it as a necessary tool for the greater Iron Range and beyond to open the doors for people to discuss mental health.

As barriers to accessing services continue to grind on smaller communities across Greater Minnesota, be it through a lack of nearby providers, broadband deficiencies or the stigmas of mental health care, these locally-based groups can serve as a soft landing spot for those seeking help.

Mental health ministries are separate from professional services and don’t provide diagnoses, counseling or treatment. Instead, they are community-based support groups operated through faith organizations aimed at helping people through their struggles and connecting them with resources.

That led me to find a March 2023 policy brief from the National Association for Rural Mental Health that reported on mental health needs in Minnesota…

There is a shortage of mental health providers in rural regions of Minnesota. In rural areas of the state there are 1,960 people for each mental health provider compared to 340 people per provider in urban areas (Steiner, 2021). Availability is not the only barrier rural farmers face when seeking help for mental health conditions. Common barriers identified by rural adults are cost, accessibility, embarrassment, and stigma (American Farm Bureau). In many cases rural farmers are required to travel long distances to receive mental health services (NRHA, 2023). Telehealth is a promising solution in some cases but a lack of broadband coverage in some rural areas can be a barrier.

Part of their recommendation for better access to mental health facilities is telehealth and expansion of rural broadband.

 

EVENT: Are there barriers to rural communities getting fair share of federal funds? Learn from Brookins on Jan 31

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The Brooking Institution recently released a report accessibility to federal funding for rural communities (What’s in it for rural? Analyzing the opportunities for rural America in IIJA, CHIPS, and IRA)….

By passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the 117th Congress approved over a trillion dollars in immediate appropriations and nearly $600 billion more in authorizations to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, climate resilience, and industrial policy. Many of the resources are aimed at supporting local and regional institutions and governments, reflecting a renewed focus on place-based policy.

Given the complex challenges that rural communities face to achieve and sustain prosperity, we examined the provisions of this legislation to identify where rural places are statutorily included or where funding objectives are exceptionally relevant to rural community and economic development. Our analysis estimates that more than $464 billion, or 45% of the combined appropriations in these three laws, present a significant opportunity for rural America. An estimated $24 billion, or 2% of these appropriations, is exclusive to rural places.

At the same time, the multiplicity of the programs; their design, matching, and reporting requirements; and their scoring criteria and decision making processes can create barriers to access for rural communities, whose local government officials are often volunteers and whose city halls often have limited staff. Even the wide variety of definitions for “rural” used across federal agencies creates complications. Sixty-six of the programs receiving appropriations are brand-new, complicating an already complex federal ecosystem of more than 400 programs.

It aligns with a view of the comments I heard at the Minnesota Broadband Task Force meeting this morning.

  • First, someone commented that there were nonprofits in the Twin Cities that were able to help organizations (in this context, a cooperative) get federal funding but not in rural areas.
  • Second, the Office of Broadband Development recognized that while BEAD funding needs to provide funding for rural areas, the rules that NTIA says they must use to administer the funding, is a barrier, especially related to mapping and potential challenges because smaller, rural communities do not have expertise, staffing or funding for consultants to do the work to follow up on barriers or opportunities.
  • Third, there is competitive digital equity funds (as well as state-administered funds) available but NTIA is looking at making big grants, not smaller ones, which puts smaller, rural communities at a disadvantage.

The Brookings report looks at these issues and at matching, which is another barrier for rural communities. Here’s what they say about broadband…

Broadband funding ($62 billion in appropriations) has particular importance for rural communities, given the persistent gap in rural access. These resources focus on closing the gap in physical deployment as well as ensuring accessibility through initiatives such as the new Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which will allocate $42.5 billion to the states to distribute; the Affordable Connectivity Program, $14.2 billion to enable low-income households to subscribe to high-speed internet; and the three State Digital Equity Programs, worth $3.29 billion. The USDA ReConnect program received $1.9 billion in appropriations, which the department reported as financing $2.86 billion in loans and $140 million in technical assistance.

I’m excited for a webinar that Brookings is hosting on January 31, which I think will really move this conversation forward – at a very important time…

Join us on January 31 from 2-3:30 pm ET to hear takeaways from a new Brookings report quantifying the funding and technical assistance for rural America and hear from rural leaders on the challenges and opportunities they see on the horizon.

Quantifying the rural-urban gap and impact of broadband competition

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The Daily Yonder looks at the rural-urban broadband gap…

The most recent data we have show dramatic rural – urban gaps in both broadband access (simple availability) and adoption (percent of households signing up for broadband).  It’s widely recognized that affordability plays a large role in why households remain offline. But because there is no federally collected data on broadband price that includes both rural and urban areas, very few studies have been able to quantify the price differences across these geographies.

Thankfully, BroadbandNow (an independent broadband availability website) went through the painstaking process of gathering pricing data from over 4,000 terrestrial broadband providers in late 2020 and compiled them into a Zipcode-level database that is publicly available.  Their pricing data is for the lowest-priced terrestrial (wired or fixed wireless) residential standalone internet package for 25 / 3 service and contains entries for over 26,000 Zip codes in the continental U.S.

The BroadbandNow dataset also includes the number of wired providers at different speed thresholds (25/3 and 100/3) as well as the number of fixed wireless providers.  This is all taken from the slightly outdated June 2019 FCC Form 477 dataset, but it still represents a reasonably accurate portrait of the availability situation when the pricing data was collected.  When this data is combined with a Zipcode-level measure of rurality, it allows for examination of how broadband price varies by both rurality and number of providers.

The data show that in late 2020, the average monthly cost of a 25/3 broadband connection was nearly $13 higher in rural Zip codes.  In many ways, this is expected.  After all, rural areas tend to have dramatically fewer options for connecting – and there is a good argument that this “competition gap” is driving higher prices.  But the BroadbandNow data also allows us to break out urban vs. rural prices based on the number of providers available in a Zip code.

This breakout shows us a few different things.  First, the “competition gap” is real – for both urban and rural locations.  Urban Zip codes with just a single provider are paying nearly $25 more per month (!) than those with two or more providers, and this gap is nearly $10 for rural Zips.  Second, rural and urban monthly prices are about the same in Zip codes with either 0 or 1 high-speed provider (only a few urban Zips have 0 high-speed providers).  But, in Zip codes with multiple high-speed providers, a significant rural-urban gap of more than $10 exists.  Some of this is because “2 or more providers” typically means a higher number in urban (4) than in rural (2) Zips.  Some of it is also likely because infrastructure is more costly to provide in less densely-populated areas – and rural providers may need to charge higher prices to recover that investment.

This leads us to the BEAD funding’s affordability requirements. States are generally going to be spending this money in locations without another viable high-speed option, which by itself should decrease consumer costs in those locations (i.e. help them move from $88.44 to $64.90 in the above figure). Beyond this, all BEAD funding recipients are required to “offer at least one low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers.” Many states are interpreting this as offering an option for $30 per month or less, so that it would be fully covered by the Affordable Connectivity Program monthly subsidy. Notably, most Zip codes with 2+ high-speed providers will not be getting BEAD funds, so we shouldn’t expect many $30 or less options to pop up in these locations.

President Biden stops in Northfield to announce $5 billion in rural investment

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports…

President Joe Biden kicked off a tour of rural America at a hog farm just north of Northfield on Wednesday, seeking support for his agenda in parts of the country where his party has increasingly struggled for votes.

“When rural America does well, when Indian country does well, we all do well,” Biden said, speaking in a chilly machine shed in front of a large American flag at Dutch Creek Farms in rural Dakota County. …

The billed reason for Wednesday’s trip was to spotlight farmers who are leaning on $5 billion in recent federal spending to improve sustainability and offer producers a competitive leg up in new markets.

“The money is there to help farmers and ranchers tackle the climate crisis through climate smart agriculture and cover crops,” Biden said.

There seemed to be some recognition that broadband is needed for smart agriculture…

Prior to Biden’s address, farmers, ag industry leaders and rural development officials mingled in the shed, discussing the federal spending that ranges from broadband expansion to increasing the number of small and medium-sized meat-processing plants to so-called “green” farming practices, such as no-till and cover-cropping.

Comparing MN vs US farm access and use of broadband

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The USDA reports on technology Use for farmers looking at farm computer usage and ownership…

Nationally, 85 percent of farms reported having access to the internet. In 2023, 32 percent of farms used the internet to purchase agricultural inputs, which was an increase of 3 percent from 2021. Additionally, 23 percent of farms used the internet to market agricultural activities, which was an increase of 2 percent from 2021. Farms which conducted business with non-agricultural websites in 2023 increased by 2 percent to 49 percent.

In 2023, 51 percent of internet connected farms utilized a broadband connection while 75 percent of internet connected farms had access through a cellular data plan. Additionally, 69 percent of farms had a desktop or laptop computer while 82 percent of farms had a smart phone.

And here’s how Minnesota compares to US stats. (I’m only looking at the 2023 info, but 2021 is also in the report if you wanted to compare impact of time.)

Own/use desktop or laptop

  • National 69 percent
  • MN 70 percent

Own/use a smartphone

  • National 82 percent
  • MN 85 percent

Own/use a device

  • National 32 percent
  • MN 30 percent

Own/use another sort of computer

  • National 2 percent
  • MN 1 percent

Access to broadband

  • National 85 percent
  • MN 86 percent

Purchase agricultural inputs over internet

  • National 32 percent
  • MN 31 percent

Conduct agricultural marketing activities over internet

  • National 23 percent
  • MN 34 percent

Conduct business with any non-agricultural website

  • National 49 percent
  • MN 63 percent

Type of broadband:

Dialup

  • National 22 percent
  • MN 2 percent

DSL/Fiber/Cable

  • National 51 percent
  • MN 52 percent

Cellular

  • National 75 percent
  • MN 79 percent

Satellite

  • National 23 percent
  • MN 23 percent

Other

  • National 2 percent
  • MN less than 1 percent

Using precision agriculture practices to manage crops or livestock

  • National 27 percent
  • MN less than 32 percent

Why don’t folks in Indiana have home broadband subscriptions?

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The folks at Purdue University always do a great job with broadband research and surveys. They recently asked folks who don’t have a home connection why they don’t. There may be some regional differences but I feel like it’s helpful to see the results.

Today, we take a close look at the reasons why 12.4% of Indiana survey respondents did not pay for home internet for any of the previous 12 months. Reasons included in the survey were grouped into affordability, availability, alternatives/skills, and privacy/relevance. Figure 1 breaks down each group and the percentage of survey respondents citing a “big” reason (options included not a reason, small reason, medium reason, and big reason) for not paying for home internet at all over the previous 12 months.

Interesting also to look at how the covered populations (to borrow from at NTIA term) differed in their answers…

Among rural survey respondents, 42.2% said home internet costs too much followed by 38.9% saying they could not get it installed. This confirms lack of broadband access in rural areas is a barrier since less than 10% of urban survey respondents (not shown) cited this reason.

Broadband still a hot topic at Farmfest

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on the Farmfest, especially they talk about how the “Ag Bill” isn’t the most apt name that “food bill” might make it more meaningful to a wider audience…

As those who follow the twice-a-decade farm bill know, the legislation suffers from a misnaming. While the omnibus law, last re-upped by Congress in 2018, funds crop insurance and rural broadband programs, 80% of its spending is on food and hunger initiatives. The next bill is expected to top $1 trillion in spending.

“It should be [called] a food bill because that’s what it is,” said Dan Glessing, president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation and a dairy farmer from Renville County.

More about broadband and an implication on the impact of broadband on food, agriculture and rural areas…

“I think about the young people in the world right now. Where do you want to raise a family?” asked Emmer, emphasizing rural broadband funding. “I’d rather raise a family in rural Minnesota. I think the values actually make sense.”

SpaceX launches new super huge satellite to improve broadband in rural areas

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MSN reports…

SpaceX delayed by a day the launch of Hughes Network Systems’ Jupiter 3, a satellite designed to modernize an old-school approach to space-based internet access. The Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the satellite is now set to take off at 8:04 p.m. PT Thursday, SpaceX said after a “violation of abort criteria” scrubbed the earlier Wednesday launch plan.

The “vehicle and payload are in good health,” SpaceX said.

When it goes into service in the fourth quarter of 2023, Jupiter 3 should quadruple Hughes’ download speeds to 100 megabits per second, making the technology more useful in a data-hungry world. Hughes hasn’t yet revealed prices for the faster new service.

Launching a single massive communications satellite contrasts sharply with much of the satellite broadband innovation today from SpaceX’s Starlink and rivals like OneWeb and Amazon’s Kuiper. They employ “constellations” of hundreds of smaller, cheaper satellites orbiting relatively close in low Earth orbit.

Hughes’ Jupiter 3 couldn’t be more different. It’s a single nine-ton satellite the size of a bus — 27 feet long and 127 feet wide once its solar panels are deployed. It’s designed to circle the Earth in sync with the planet’s rotation in a much higher geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above the equator. That choice parking place is fixed in the sky, meaning antennas can be pointed at it without having to reconnect with a constant parade of low Earth orbit satellites whizzing by closer to the planet.

Most of us are better served by cable or fiber-optic broadband that offers higher speeds and shorter communication delays, called latency. But for rural customers and others who are beyond the reach of more conventional network technology, satellite communications can play a key role connecting people who are hard to bring online.

Land O’Lakes continues to work to bring better broadband to rural areas

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It’s great to see Minnesota’s own Land O’Lakes getting recognition for their continued work on the expanding broadband to rural areas. Fierce Telecom profiled their work…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 22.3% of Americans in rural areas lack coverage from fixed terrestrial 25/3 Mbps broadband, as compared to only 1.5% of Americans in urban areas – a gap that was deeply felt during the COVID pandemic and continues to widen as more business, education and healthcare rely on connectivity.

During the height of COVID, Land O’Lakes expedited its budding plans to help close the broadband access gap in rural America, said Tina May, VP of rural services.

As a cooperative owned by around 1,700 farmers, Land O’Lakes is situated in over 10,000 rural communities in the U.S., touching about half of the harvested acres in the country.

They mentioned their member-drive, COVID-inspired, Wi-Fi hotspots for local residents…

In 2020 Land O’Lakes collaborated with local partners in rural, low-access areas to set up free Wi-Fi in parking lots. One of those partners, Tractor Supply Company, still offers Wi-Fi in some of its locations. …

While not all Land O’Lakes’ COVID-era Wi-Fi spots are up and functioning anymore (“in a post-COVID environment, it wasn’t as necessary,” May said), the ACP still has free, public Wi-Fi available at more than 3,000 locations across the U.S.

Land O’Lakes has a map of those locations on its website.

They mention the American Connection Project and Lead for America…

As part of the ACP, Land O’Lakes set up the American Connection Project Policy Coalition, a 175-member coalition of businesses and advocates. According to May, the coalition had a hand in the passing of the $65 billion Bipartisan infrastructure Bill of November 2021.

Led in conjunction with Lead for America (LFA), the ACP in April 2021 also set up American Connection Corps, an ACP fellowship connecting locals to their hometown broadband efforts for a two-year paid program. During the program fellows are set up with local offices and taught skills such as grant writing, advocacy and community organizing.

And the American Connection Corps…

The American Connection Corps has paired up with a number of state broadband offices, many of which were set up in preparation for BEAD allocations. Land O’Lakes will be graduating its first 50 fellows soon, May said, and has a new cohort ready to start in August – which will include 105 fellows across 34 states.

So far, fellows belonging to the program have won 88 grants totaling over $45 million, with more than 50 permanent broadband infrastructure installations completed. One fellow in Gage County, Nebraska was responsible for organizing a $11 million grant for his community.

Investment in broadband in rural MN should reap jobs

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Public News Service reports…

Minnesota is preparing to make use of more than $650 million in federal aid to bring high-speed internet to underserved populations.
Rural areas often lack broadband access, and the extra support is seen as a pathway to well-paying jobs in smaller communities. The Biden administration announced last month exactly how much broadband funding states would get from the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, compared the move to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which brought electricity to many small towns for the first time. He called the federal broadband support a “game changer” for rural economies.
“It’s well-needed and it’s a good investment,” Wertish contended. “Whether you’re a farmer or you’re a businessman, it seems like we’re competing in a global economy.”
Wertish noted farmers use broadband in their work, but added it might also convince people who left small towns to move back for business opportunities. Rural areas have grappled with population woes, but state researchers say many businesses still struggle to fill openings outside the Twin Cities. Broadband advocates said rural residents could also take more online classes to gain new skills.
Because the workforce is often smaller, Wertish pointed out union-scale jobs can be hard to come by in rural communities, but he suggested creating more broadband fairness could change the narrative.

Cass County looks at federal and state investment in broadband: is it enough?

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Walker’s Pilot Independent has started a series of monthly articles from the Cass County DFL Party. This month they are looking at broadband. It’s sort of a 101 lesson of the policy or business of broadband…

Created by the state legislature, the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development (OBD) began operations in 2014 to work toward the goal of border-to-border high-speed internet access by 2026. The OBD has administered $296 million in broadband grants thus far, helping to connect 103,000 businesses. The OBD predicts that the additional public investment from 2022 to 2026 needed to reach the goal is $1.38 billion at a 75 percent grant funding level. This is over and above state and federal funding to date including the recent $652 million award.

While this is still a significant amount needed to reach the goal, there’s little doubt that the federal infrastructure funding, coupled with the $100 million appropriated by the 2023 DFL-led state legislature for broadband, will make a tremendous impact on achieving our border-to-border access goal. It is anticipated that the $1.38 billion will come from a second federal infrastructure appropriation expected next year, biennial state budget appropriations, and state reserves.

Why subsidize broadband expansion? In a word — money. It’s too expensive for broadband developers to lay fiber optic cable in difficult terrain and more sparsely populated areas. Broadband is not unlike the development of other types of basic infrastructure over our country’s rich history in the need for public investment. Our intercontinental rail system, interstate highway system, electric grid, and our wired telephone system, all needed public investment to ensure these systems served all Americans. Then and now, public investment bridges the gaps through public-private partnerships when market incentives are not sufficient to meet real needs.

While this is still a significant amount needed to reach the goal, there’s little doubt that the federal infrastructure funding, coupled with the $100 million appropriated by the 2023 DFL-led state legislature for broadband, will make a tremendous impact on achieving our border-to-border access goal. It is anticipated that the $1.38 billion will come from a second federal infrastructure appropriation expected next year, biennial state budget appropriations, and state reserves.

Why subsidize broadband expansion? In a word — money. It’s too expensive for broadband developers to lay fiber optic cable in difficult terrain and more sparsely populated areas. Broadband is not unlike the development of other types of basic infrastructure over our country’s rich history in the need for public investment. Our intercontinental rail system, interstate highway system, electric grid, and our wired telephone system, all needed public investment to ensure these systems served all Americans. Then and now, public investment bridges the gaps through public-private partnerships when market incentives are not sufficient to meet real needs.

The system also requires the installation of some ground equipment. The commitment to broadband via fiber optic cable is seen as a nearly no-fail technology with very low ongoing maintenance costs to fill an increasingly urgent need sooner than later, that some would say we needed “yesterday.”