Over the last six months or so, the Blandin Foundation has been re-investigating the best ways to approach broadband across Minnesota – especially in rural Minnesota. Last month they sent a concept paper on one promising approach – Open Networks. Below is a excerpt from the document sent to the board. I post this with the permission of the Blandin Foundation. I thought it did a great job of describing open networks and Blandin’s perspective on open networks.

Why Broadband, Why Blandin? 
Blandin Foundation’s mission-driven focus on broadband is based on the recognition that high speed access to the Internet is a prerequisite for improving any community’s economic and social welfare.  High speed access to the Internet strengthens local economic vitality, stimulates business competitiveness and improves the quality of peoples’ lives, through improved delivery of services such as health care and education.   First developed in 2003 with input from the Broadband Strategy Board, the goals of the Foundation’s Broadband Initiative remain to: 

• Increase awareness about the value of broadband telecommunications use and services
• Increase business and residential use of broadband in rural communities
• Increase public and private investment in rural broadband capacity

 Significant progress has been made on the first two of these goals.    A focus on Open Networks is designed to help move the needle on the third.   

Why Open Networks?
While still rare in the United States, Open Networks are emerging in Europe, Asia and Africa as an innovative public-private partnership approach to ensuring that the benefit and value of broadband internet access are passed on to end users to a far greater extent than under more traditional (closed incumbent operated) systems.  A World Bank report to donors evaluating the merits of Open Networks concludes: “encouraging and financing pilots and scalability projects may reap substantial economic and social benefit.” Open Networks’ most distinguishing feature is that the infrastructure is owned and controlled independently of any service or content which runs over it (think of FedEx and the US Postal Service sharing the public roads with delivery trucks and other private motorists). This enables anyone connected to the network to take or provide content or service from or to anyone else on the network, thus stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship and enhancing the competitiveness of local business.    

Industry Concerns
However, Open Networks is a very disruptive concept.  Because some of the core and access technologies central to Open Networks (Internet Protocols) are disruptive to the traditional business models that have underpinned telecommunication service delivery to date, both incumbent and competing providers are likely to oppose the emergence of local open access network initiatives in Minnesota.  And yet, because they are carrying debt from “legacy infrastructure (often copper wire), incumbent providers are poorly positioned to invest on their own in the 21^st century infrastructure required for global competitiveness, particularly in sparsely populated rural areas.  

Blandin Foundation Opportunity
Given our obligation and opportunity as a foundation to initiate thought and action, experiment with new approaches, dissent from prevailing attitudes and act quickly and flexibly, Blandin Foundation is uniquely positioned to promote Open Networks as an effective strategy for helping rural communities achieve strong economies where the benefits and burdens are widely shared.  Open Networks “fit” the following Strategic Operating Principles adopted with the new strategic plan: emphasize partnerships to leverage resources for rural Minnesota; address issues at appropriate scale; take and encourage informed risk; and leverage the Foundation’s unique role and capacity.