Here are my notes from the Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force meeting today. I think it was a good day – the main drive was to get through some contentious issues. I did my best to capture the conversation. If you want a shortcut you might consider jumping to the indented portions of the notes, which reflect the notes that were taken by the facilitator.

Update on stimulus package/What was heard in DC in the last 3 weeks:
• Everyone is waiting on NTIA; guidelines expected mid or late June.
• The FCC is waiting on appointment; not looking for comments until they are ready.
• RUS & NTIA are going to work together on the application process. One source for applying and applicants can get money from either.

Public Comment: nothing from attendees

If someone has a relevant point – how can they submit it? They could send a note to Rick King or attend a meeting and speak.

Issue Number One:  Role of Governement

Define issue:
Some people feel government should furnish broadband as they do roads. Others believe that should be left to others.
Does anyone believe the government should be involved in content for example consumer sales materials?

Government gets less involved as you move up the info stack. But even at the high level government has some consumer protection.

Initially I thought no – but MMUA folks might disagree in that they provide public access info.

Should the government provide services?

Under certain circumstances when the private sector doesn’t step in – then maybe the government does need to go in.

Does it make sense to come up with criteria where this group might sanction government intervention.

Public-private partnership can help put in the conduit. Maybe the government should become a coordinating support.

1. Government looks out of best interest of constituents?
2. Is broadband in public interest?
3. As a regulating entity, what is their role?

The role of gov right now, I can identify 3 roles:
• Finance partner
• Regulator – so they regulate price
• Competitor – the existing criteria is when a super majority says OK; then gov can become competitor

Another way to look at it:
• Government as provider
• Government as participant

Now where does the recent move on online gambling fit into either model?

We could add promoter of or leader in broadband
Why do you regulate? To promote a vision of higher penetration.

If we agree role of government as participant, then we look at role of provider. Is there anyone who believes that government should be a competitor when there is existing service?
What about Scott County? They are a provider but not retail provider. They provide infrastructure.

Provider does not exclusively mean competitor

State k12 and library network is partially provided by private sector – but it’s a state infrastructure that most of us like. But if they developed it today – would there be arguments? Probably. But the strong k12 network has been a boon to the state.

What’s provider? What’s consumer? Libraries and schools are consumers – not necessarily providers, unless there isn’t a market-supported provider.

Question for provider community: Is there a role for government in terms of a backbone provider? We all seem to agree that there is a role of government.

There are different level governments and there are different levels of providers. There are different providers up the stack. There are gaps of service.

It also makes sense to look at government role in FTTH.

Libraries and schools are potential anchor tenants. They look at the infrastructure every 3 years. The private sector provides the best service and allowing libraries & schools to buy locally helps provide the community provider with a good local anchor tenant.

To deliver education the network needs to reach to every home – that’s a k12 network that really serves.

In the context of education, we view it as a responsibly to make sure that kids get their textbooks. As the world gets more virtual – do we need to shift our thinking to make sure they have access to broadband?

We used to require transportation to get kids to the school – we could also shift that to providing access online.

A successful recipe is where families and the schools are online but not everyone can afford it. We have that with band too.

Maybe we need to set an overall goal and then figure out how the government can help achieve that goal.

What Scott County does is frowned upon by people in the business. What else could they do?
Focus on their role as a consumer – the provider can come in and make the investment. Maybe the government could help aggregate need. If the demand is there, the providers can step.

The providers have said that if there is need; the providers can come in. Density is not the be all, end all.
But then why aren’t they serving certain areas.

There is a perception that there is no bb in certain areas; there is also the perception that in certain areas the government cannot provide that kind of support. How do we address that situation?

Maybe if governments feel underserved, they can put out an RFP to see what the private sector can do. Maybe the government could gather the RFPS. The results may help recognize if the government could play a role beyond consumer.

Cherry picking is dangerous if you want to serve a whole area. You can take away the anchor tenants and expect a private company to step in when the low hanging fruit is gone. We want to be careful about building a series of closed networks.

Government agency as a consumer is a different model. From a provider perspective – if you can count on government consumers it makes the area more attractive to enter that area.

Densely populated areas are most attractive to providers. That’s why the stimulus package is focusing on less dense areas.

There are areas where there is market failure. Then government can either support a private provider or do their own over build.

The provider view is that government should be incenting investment rather than building it itself.

We need to make it easier for potential consumers to find out who does or could provide service to their area. Government could maintain that database.

Government as finance partner might be a place to start on consensus.

Role of government – what level are we talking about, state, county, municipality? These discussions get easier in rural areas because there is easier agreement in areas that are unserved. That feeds into the next discussion of speed. The discussion is tougher in metro areas.

Where there are multiple providers – should government step in? No.

Government is consumer, provider, investor, regulator, promoter and public policy. Maybe there will be easier agreement on some of these roles.

The most interesting discussion is of government as investor.

Underlying everything is a goal of providing the highest broadband to the most people.

But maybe we do need to look at what are the big goals – what is broadband, what is underserved? Taking about a goal of 100Mbit/sec – the role of government is different than if we’re talking about 50mbit/sec.

What are the goals of the task force?
There’s productivity in getting to the issues.

Here’s the info from the flip charts:
1. Infrastructure – the road or the backbone
2. Regulatory – consumer protection and protect all consumers
3. Content – define criteria
commercial
Gov’t content
services
k12, higher education, library learning network
4. Public/Private partnerships
coordination invest public $
incenting investment
5. Finance partner (provides $)
incenting investment
6. Competitor – state, statute gives legal authority
7. Government as participant – agree
8. Government as provider (infrastructure vs service delivery)
9. Promoter/leaders
10. Economic Development – helps fill the gaps
11. Access to public education
12. Capital issues – help with (Subsidies)
Service issues – help with (Subsidies)
13. Inter-governmental coordination
14. Government as consumer, end users w/public services “anchor tenants”
15. Coordinator to ensure coverage is provided/buy services
will need to carve out the segments of gov’t when defining role of govt
city
16. Information Sources
17. Aggregator of Info
county
state

BREAK

Second Issues – Speed

We have to look at speed – it’s in our name.

Maybe we need to start at the bottom – think of the farmhouse in rural MN in 2015.

How about 50Mbit/s to the last farmhouse?

Everyone agrees that there are levels.
Tiers should be based on pricing not user. Or application tiers
The California had tiers in their report with a nice chart.

What are the tiers?

At some point a floor needs to be defined if we want to define underserved.

How is the legislature going to use those tiers? Hopefully to set minimum speeds.

Maybe we need to look at California tiers.
http://www.calink.ca.gov/pdf/CBTF_FINAL_Report.pdf (page 12)

But is the California chart just a primer? From a policy perspective – how does this fit in? Two neighboring farms may have very different broadband needs.

We need to decide  as a task force – should broadband be ubiquitous and at what level?

We’re not suggesting that we set a floor and everyone needs to provide that speed immediately. We’re just talking about what people will need in 2015. The ceiling has to be a decent number to accommodate real use. We’re picking a number that we think that Minnesota should be striving to reach.

So we set a speed of 50M and someone has a system of 49M – now what?

It’s a little like healthcare – where there is a tiered service based on location but we’re striving for better.

It’a reasonable for government to say EMT services should be able to reach you within 15 minutes (or whatever) but if you feel you need to live next door to a hospital – then move. Ubiquity is the minimum you can find anywhere.

So if a provider has 49M, you don’t get sent home – good things happen to you to help you reach the goal.

But what if there are two providers in an area and neither provides an adequate service?

If I were a legislator, have the tiers defined by application would be helpful. Broadband will build like phones – and there are people who still have ordinary phones – no voicemail no other bells or whistles.

As a policy maker, we need to know what speed is base level. Then we can decide if it makes sense to make an investment for homne-based businesses who want enhanced services at residential rates.

So at some point we’re going to set a floor speed for residential users everywhere.

We could highlight areas that are in our charter (healthcare, edu …) when we’re listing applications.

Once you define a minimum, they have a choice to go above. Legislators can use that info to decide where to make investments. So development can be funded.

I don’t to set a limit until we’ve figured out what applications can be run at that speed.

What is needed to everyday tasks online (like check kids’ homework).

Economics come in. There’s a cost to provide 50Mbit/c – it’s $120/month. Some people will decide that they don’t want to spend that much. The lower the price, the more people would take it. What they’ve learned is that the more pricing choices, the more people take the lower levels.

But setting a speed might out-price the service.

It would be useful to augment this by tracking who is served by these levels. Because a good use of government money is to incent businesses to serve the un/underserved. So what would be the expense to get everyone to the base level?

That’s’ getting into how will we get to 2015.

The discussion of speed can’t be removed from a discussion of cost.

One of the things we can be is aspirational. We might ask everyone to stretch a little bit to move our state forward. We could be very practical or we could aspire to something more.

The answer might be the middle ground.

We can’t set the bar to low.
Maybe we can inspire the high end users – such as the hospitals.

Maybe we need to create tier scenarios. The applications are what drive broadband. We need to look at where we’re going to be and where we’re going.

We need to look again at the legislative mandate:
http://www.ultra-high-speed-mn.org/CM/Custom/SF1918.asp

So we need to get everyone on the highway
But we need to recognize how many people need to get on the highway today. Then we can look at how to get them on and what it would take.

People of a certain generation have opted out of the Internet – but their kids won’t.

Being online is an experience. Being online with broadband is a different experience. Being online without sufficient broadband doesn’t work.

The market tells us that residential customers choose 1.5M – even when higher options are available.

I think it’s imperative that the government take a role is educating users – especially if they are going to providing services online.

But as a task force I don’t think our job is promote broadband traning.

Applications that will push minimums: Macs download the whole operating system again. There are minimums to keep the networks flowing. Cloud computing steps of the need for broadband.

Our task is setting a floor that will keep us secure.

The issue comes to value – what are people willing to pay for.
But if that were the case we’d be living on gravel roads.

I totally disagree with 1.5M as a good minimum – it won’t work for 2015.

Task one should be to give the legislature a floor speed for today. We shouldn’t stop there – but maybe it’s a place to start.

But realistically we’re taking this to the legislature for 2010. By the time it’s built it will be 2015.

But we’re not sending the 2009 minimum speed to the legislature. We need it for our conversation.

Between the map and the California tiers, we can submit some info for today.

This conversation happened in California too. They spent time thinking of ubiquity. The next step would be to drive usage which would demand. So start with ubiquity and that could lead towards investment for growth.

Is there agreement that one way to do this is to say “MN citizens in 2015 are going to need to do… and list applications? … and we anticipate that they will need broadband speeds of ___ to get there.”

From the Flip Chart on Speed

1. Minimum goal speed (policy)
2. All MN’s can access the minimum from someone (ubiquity)
3. There is pricing available if you want a lower speed than the minimum (Access point that’s not painful)
4. Able to access a speed higher than the minimum in willing to pay for it
5. If you are in an area where the minimum speed is not available, the state can help make it happen (public policy)
• Create a Table like CA report (balance speed & applications) – that will be helpful to policy makers. Need to add who we are serving at each of the levels and where do the people represented in our chart fall on the chart
• What would it take to get everyone in MN at the minimum
• Where are the gaps? What groups are unserved?
• What so we get for the minimum speed?
Speed in the contest of 2015
• Tiers (by application)
• Residential (home)
• Telemedicine
• File sharing
• (Like CA Report)

• MNN Citizens in 2015 are going to need…
• Govt services
• Education
• Telelmedicine
• And we’re going to need speeds of _____ or higher

SPEAKER Rey Ramsey from One Economy: http://www.one-economy.com/

Broadband in a community should be:
• Available
• Affordable
• Adopted

They provide the following services:
• Digital literacy – employ youth to deliver tech literacy as a community service
• Beehive – help people access resources & The Public Internet Channel
• Work with municipalities on housing projects and last mile access

Questions:

How would you suggest we pursue 100 penetration of broadband?
It’s important to look at the basics (access, affordability, and adoption).

In state where you’re most active, talk about how you partner with government?
It varies. In some ways rural areas are easier – because one person wears so many hats. We try to work with someone to create a blueprint that will do an environmental scan and then create a blueprint to attack the “3 a’s”.

We’re struggling with minimum speed thresholds for 2015. Do you have any ideas?
I get asked that a lot. Some folks here might be able to help you through that issue. Whatever you invest in – you want to make sure they have the aptitude and intent to upgrade their speeds. You want to work with flexibility.

You talk about cities. Can you talk about rural area?
Green County North Carolina. The municipality brought us in to help with wireless.
Have worked with tribal communities.
Working with another tribal community to get stimulus money.

How can we effect affordability on a statewide basis?
We’d like to see what the FCC does before the stimulus money goes out. For example we would want to change universal service funds. That will open up some funding.
Take a look at housing policy (especially affordable housing policy) and work with them to get them to include broadband options.

BACK to Speed

Minnesota citizens are going to need_____ and will require broadband of ______ to do that.

Let’s fill in the blanks:

Government services
Update & secure & backup computers
Healthcare
Education
Entertainment/Interactive video
Use cloud computing
Conduct business from home (both home-based business and telecommuting)

If we’re talking about ubiquity – then we want to figure out what is the minimal need.

So much of what happens does start with entertainment.

Aren’t trying to figure out what folks can do online – not what they should do.

A lot of application in the next 5-10 years are going to be application-to-application – home security, tracking refrigerator maintenance, gauge electricity use.

There may be more than one computer of the house!

We have to consider shared bandwidth in a household.

With machine-to-machine applications we need symmetrical access.

It seems like 50Mbit/s is still a good number.

We know we’re missing something that hasn’t been invented yet.

Maybe we need to create a living document that can be updated as new applications arise.

Recap – we agree on the following
• We need a minimum goal speed (ubiquity)
• There is pricing available if someone wants to come in at a lower level
• People can access higher speeds if they pay for it
• If minimum speeds aren’t available State will someone help out
• People liked the California model but would like to be more granular and come alive (and update)
• Minnesota citizens are going to use broadband to____
o Gov services
o Education
o Conduct business
o Secure computers
• We anticipate that they’ll need ____ speeds to do that

But don’t we just want to get people on broadband – worry about the speeds later?

Well only about 12 percent of Internet users dialup are on dialup

How many people think there should be a number? What number?

We’ve all agreed that we want broadband everywhere. So the onramp speed is 1.5Mbit/s. The problem is that many people can get this with satellite – and that’s not acceptable.

The minimum everywhere today is 1.5M. So we’re saying that we at least need to get there.

It would be hard to use public money to get an area to 1.5M.

But a lot of places that need help will get it at a higher rate.

Is 1.5M going to address the need? No – this is just for today.

So what do we think the minimum will be in 2015?

Maybe there’s an onramp number that doesn’t get you to the applications people need.

Places that are unserved – they are unserved for other services too. Lack of broadband is symptomatic of other things. So maybe we need to think about how many of these other services that are out of reach would be accessible with broadband.

So what would be the highest access speeds to get the services most folks will want/need? Then we can incent providers to meet those speeds.

We want to look at what’s happening in other countries too.

If you’re really in the unserved areas – then an upgrade would probably leapfrog to a higher speed than 1.5M.

Could we get 4-5 people work together on this? Look at what applications people will want/need and what speeds will be required. (Vijay, Dick, Tom, Chris, Jack, Mike, John S, Joanne – led by Mike)

End of meeting notes…

Was this a useful way to get through issues?

Two things were useful – quick show of hands; putting opinions on a matrix based on written work.

Other topic – articulating our goals would be helpful.

The open meeting law should go away. So that we can get some subgroups work done. We need more time.
Subgroups could play a role – but we can’t convene them too early.

On the afternoon of June 18 Blandin is going to have a workshop. Everyone is invited. At 7-9:00 there will be a reception with the public.

It seems as if there were some parts of the report where we could all agree – maybe we could look at that to see if there are parts that are getting done.

We will have for the next meeting a lot of content into a more ready state so that we can strike and argue about what’s there. You’ll be surprised about how much info is there.