I was wrestling socks on my two year old. I turned on the TV to distract her – and what came on? The live committee meeting for the statewide cable franchise proposal! It didn’t distract her but I got out paper and a pen to take the best notes I could. (Remember, I still had the two year old.) I have wrriten them up as best I could. It’s long but hopefully helpful. Continue reading
Griff Wigley, our blog coach extraordinaire, just sent me a couple of articles about TV going Internet – or maybe that’s Internet go to the TV. The article are:
So what’s the deal? A group of tech companies (including Microsoft and Google) just presented the FCC with a device that would provide the Internet over the unused space between TV channels. (A comparison was made to broadband spectrum in the wireless world.) If this device works – it will be an opportunity for consumers to access the Internet through their TV. Also it is passes muster with the FCC the device may be available as early as 2009. Continue reading
Daily Wireless recently posted their list of the 10 Most Connected Cities. Cities include:
The FCC announces deadline of May 7, 2007, for filing applications for its Rural Health Care Pilot Program. Here is the description of the program straight from the FCC site:
The FCC has initiated a pilot funding program to facilitate the creation of a nationwide broadband network dedicated to health care, connecting public and private non-profit health care providers in rural and urban locations.
Also straight from the site, here is a description (with links added) of the program:
The pilot program is an enhanced funding initiative intended to help public and non-profit health care providers construct state- and region-wide broadband networks to provide telehealth and telemedicine services throughout the nation. The program will fund up to 85% of the costs of constructing those networks, as well as the costs of advanced telecommunications and information services that will ride over these networks. If selected, up to 85% of the cost of connecting to Internet2, or National LambdaRail (NLR), which are both dedicated nationwide backbones, may also be funded by the pilot program. Connection to Internet 2 or NLR is not required, but may be requested by the applicants. As with the existing rural health care program, the pilot program includes access to the public Internet if requested by the applicants.
I hope we’ll see some MN projects get funding. Good luck!
My friend, world traveler, Steve Clift just sent me a great article on broadband access in Australia (Australian Broadband Guarantee Announced). In it, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, announced that Australians will now be able to access broadband services regardless of where they live thanks to the Australian Government’s $163 million (approximately $128 million USD).
The Australian Government has come up with an Australian Broadband Guarantee that will provide an affordable broadband service to all households and small businesses. Continue reading
I have just finished reading the book “The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy” by Charles R. Morris. It is a fascinating book about these entrepreneurs and the growth of the rail, steel and banking industries. Each of these men had their own style in business strategies and business relationships, cautious to aggressive, bully to patrician. Each of these industries went through their boom and bust cycles, none more than the railroads. Continue reading
I’ve been working this past year with University of Minnesota extension educator Eli Sagor on a project to create a new web-based resource for family forest land owners (MyMinnesotaWoods). In the process, Eli has done lots of research on Internet-based learning tools, and came across this piece (below). He writes: “if you haven’t seen this yet, take the three minutes to watch it now. It’s cool.” Indeed it is: from html to ethics and aesthetics and privacy, via anthropology and hypertext.
How do we get from here to there? Sometimes this question is literal like when my son and his friends are planning an evening out. Sometimes, it is policy oriented, like how do we reach community goals of economic vitality? Over many years, my work with communities has been about helping communities stimulate economic development by intervening in the private marketplace. These activities range from minor interventions like marketing (providing more information to prospective community investors) to financing businesses (loan guarantees or incentives) to the purchase, development and sale of industrial land and buildings. In each of these instances, you could argue that this is strictly a private sector role – for realtors, bankers and land owners and developers. The energy required for community action is generally equal to the failure of the private market to meet the needs of the community. Communities with robust economies (Twin Cities suburbs, for example) rely on the private sector for these activities. Rural communities may have comprehensive programs with a full suite of tools and strategies to overcome distance from markets, workforce shortages, lending practices and other impediments. Continue reading
Thanks to Bill Coleman’s imagination, last Fall I got to travel with him to Little Rock AZ to attend the annual Rural Telecon Congress. Bill heads up his own consulting firm, Community Technology Advisors and since 2005 has been working with Blandin Foundation to provide coaching and technical assistance to the 29 rural Minnesota communities enrolled in the Get Broadband: Keeping Communities Competitive program. Bill suggested that, using the Get Broadband program story as our calling card, we go to Little Rock and learn more about best practices for promoting the benefits of ultra high speed Internet access. He thought we could use what we learned to help design “phase II” of the Get Broadband program.
As hard as it is for me to escape the tyranny of my daily inbox, I am always glad when I do because of the new ideas I hear about and the new people I meet. When we got there, Bill and I conducted a survey among Congress attendees asking how their work and lives would be changed if they woke up tomorrow to 
find their homes and businesses connected to an ultra high speed network. We were surprised at how hard it was for even these saavy telecommunications advocates to answer this “live the dream” question. Most of us still don’t live in that kind of world, and so it’s hard to know what we’d do with all that speed. It seems to me that answering that question is key to generating the political will and public and private resources required to build the “big broadband” infrastructure we need to thrive in the global economy of today and tomorrow.
So I was tickled to find in my in-box this morning an announcement that the theme of the 2007 Rural Telecon Congress, to be held October 14-17 in Springfield, IL, is “capturing the promise,” with a focus on effective utilization of broadband connectivity.
I had the chance last week to make a presentation to the Humphrey Institute’s Telecommunications and Information Society Policy Forum (TISP) on the subject of Open Networks. Thanks to the remarkable Milda Hedblom, the forum’s creator and long time facilitator, TISP has long provided the Twin Cities’ telecommunications policy community a safe and thoughtful forum for discussing stubborn challenges and new ideas.
Steve Kelley, former State Senator and long time proponent of technology, especially telecommunications technology in the Minnesota was the moderator. Also in attendance was Gary Fields (pictured above) who is part of the Blandin Broadband Team.
With the second big snowstorm of the season about to fly, I had expected to see a lot of empty chairs in the room, but it turned out that plenty of folks were willing to risk facing a messy drive home to hear me out. Though I’ve been working hard to learn all I could about Open Networks, I was still plenty nervous to be speaking publicly for the first time about this new area of focus for the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative, especially at my alma mater, and with Dean Brian Atwood in the room.
With a nod of appreciation to my Humphrey training, I had titled my presentation “Open Networks: Better Broadband for the Common Good.” Continue reading
Dick Nordvold sent around this mind bending citation today (Billions and Billions of Gigabytes Served – from Internetnews.com) as part of his diligent efforts to make the case for building a FTTH project on the Iron Range.
Dick is the recently retired founder director of the Iron Range Resources’ Do I.T.! Project, and a member of the Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Strategy Board. Dick is passionate about this project because it would bring world class high speed internet access to 13 towns and one Indian tribe on the Range.
It’s an expensive project, requiring upwards of $50 million of public subsidy to build. Although plenty of folks now recognize the importance of high speed internet access for healthy rural economies, in an environment where gaming and entertainment dominate internet use it is still challenging to make the case for why we need really big pipes. This does a pretty good job.
Here are the really cool numbers from the article (Billions and Billions of Gigabytes Served – from Internetnews.com):
Last year, 161 exabytes (exabyte is a billion gigabytes) of digital information were created, representing roughly 3 million times the information in all the books ever written. Or, if you prefer, the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than 92 million miles from the earth to the sun.
They then cite a new report that says that as many as 988 billion gigabytes of digital information will be created in 2010, a six-fold increase from 2006.
I sent out a few notes about the Blandin on Broadband blog yesterday to kind of introduce ourselves and meet the neighbors who are interested in similar topics. I’ve already heard from some of you via email but I wanted to wish a warm welcome to folks from any of the following places:
MN Wired – An informal online gathering place for Minnesota’s digerati.
TIPR – Minnesota Telecommunication & Information Policy Roundtable (a group I have loved for many years!)
I am a librarian who has been involved with Internet access for more than 10 years. So, the connection between access to technology and access to information has always been intertwined for me. Towards that end I wanted to mention the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MN COGI), a group that is committed to open access to public information in print, electronic and digital forms.
MN COGI is hosting a series of events for Sunshine Week. Sunshine Week (March 11-17) is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Events include:
We just sent out the March edition of eNews, the Blandin Foundation monthly broadband email newsletter.
With the help of Bill Coleman, we were able to track down updates from a number of the Get Broadband communities. (These are communities that are currently working to promote and support broadband in their area with financial and technical help from the Blandin Foundation.) It’s fun to see what is happening with these rural areas.
I am also happy with an interview we had with Jack Geller from the Center for Rural Policy and Development. They are currently working on a report on broadband adoption in rural Minnesota in 2006, which should come out in a month or so. Jack was generous enough to share some advance information with us. For example, the broadband adoption rate in rural Minnesota jumped nearly 12 percent last year to 39.7 percent.
Check it out – I hope you enjoy it!
Here’s a quote from an article I just happened upon:
It’s clear that Next G phones and wireless broadband services are a must for sailing events and clubs across Australia.
You know the need for broadband has gone mainstream when you read an article (Sailing Events and Sailing Clubs need Next G) on the need for broadband on a sailing web site. It appears as if the vendors who coordinated the technology (Telstra Country Wide Central Queensland) may have written the article – but it is telling to see the prominence. And for the techies in the crowd, it is fun to hear about how they handled the need for communications at this sailing event.
Looking out my window at 2 feet of snow and reading about broadband in Australia is giving me some ideas for a research junket next winter!
