If the devil is in the details, then I think I could update address of today’s Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Task Force meeting. Actually it went quite well – but it is very interesting to see how people get hung up on certain words. Sometimes it’s political; sometimes it’s technical. Usually the fix is finding a synonym without the same connotations – but it’s interesting.

Also there are still a couple of bigger issues that were debated and continue to be debated. It seems as if everyone (or almost everyone) likes the idea of an ongoing entity to support/promote broadband, especially if there is an expiration date on the entity. There are disputes as to what this entity should look like.

The answer to the idea of security (redundancy et al) seems to be to emphasize the importance of looking at these issues and to ask the Legislature to ask security experts to do a study of the current situation in Minnesota. The depth of knowledge required is not available in the Task Force. The disputes seem to revolve around how specific to be in the study required and proposed experts. Also there seems to be varying opinions on how much info they want to make available to the whole world.

The topic of cost and finances was held off until next meeting due to lack of time. You can read the full notes for other details. The notes are kind of scattered because it was so detailed oriented. I’ve tried to provide as much contest as I could. It might be helpful to look at the last version of the recommendations. The sixth draft of the report is expected to be available before the next meeting (on October 16); I will try to post that here as soon as I get it (and get permission).

On with the notes…

9:30 – 9:45 – Opening comments; review meeting agenda
Approve meeting minutes from September 18th meeting

9:45 – 10:00 – Public comment – none.

10:00 – 10:30 – Ongoing Council – sub-group report
• Approve recommendations
• [Mike O’Connor, Steve Cawley, Mary Ellen Wells, John Stanoch]

Tried to flesh out specific recommendations for an ongoing body to promote and support broadband.

The group didn’t quite agree on everything – but think we’re close.

Points of agreement
– Should have a finite ending
– It’s advisory only; not a new regulatory body
– It has no power

We may need to emphasize the fact that we all need to work together. The government doesn’t need to do everything – but should act as a convener to encourage us to work together. We have offered a short list of potential projects that should be accomplished. We have prioritized this list.
– Understand what needs to be done
– ID & recommend legislative or policy ideas
– Evaluate BB issues and opportunities
– Build appropriate coalitions & ID available resources
– Obtain resource commitments
– Ensure that projects are well defined before launched
– Ensure that appropriate project leadership & mgmt are available
– Monitor & report progress
– Develop options to overcome obstacles
– Resolve disputes and revise plans

Comments:

We did not want our recommendations to languish – creating an ongoing body will help push recommendations forward.

Some folks are reticent with words like “charged with”, “actions”… maybe we need to wordsmith those terms. We don’t want to give government a reason to grow bigger.

The committee should have one goal – carry on the recommendation of the report.

The committee will have a lot of work to do. And are there times when they will need to make decisions between government and business.

The legislators don’t necessarily have knowledge of telecommunications – this committee can provide that support. It’s support that’s needed. And the laundry list of what the committee can do is necessary to help move it forward. People will ask – but what will they do?

This section already represents a compromise. We need to add specificity.

Seeing a typical agenda for the group might be interesting. The word project is sort of a sticking point because it implies action.

In project management – the need to update someone on how things are going is a great motivator. So the real power of the committee is to track and motivate – not dictate and mandate.

An effective committee can just be an opportunity to teach legislators and decision makers. The regular meetings can be places where legislators learn more by sitting in and hearing baotu what’s going on.

Funding is a question too. I’m not in favor of this if it would require a tax on Internet users or mandated more reporting for providers. The providers are already required to report to so many groups and adding to that onus would not be beneficial. It could kill the small businesses.

What kind of staff would this committee has? It does make sense to have permanent staff. Right now the Task Force has a lot of donated staff time – but that is not sustainable. If you don’t have staff you run the risk of losing corporate knowledge. How often will they meet?

There’s a model that exists for such a group. We could get the names of some specific groups and add them here.

In Eagan we’ve had a voluntary task force since 2004. It’s a wide variety of stakeholders. One of the benefits has been the idea of convening more than anything specific on the agenda. It has promoted collaboration.

This has been an interesting group on that the providers are in the group – not watching. It includes businesses.

What is the mission of the group? Maybe monitor more than anything else?

We need to include labor too. Maybe we need to talk about the proposed makeup of the next group.

This is a good reminder to thank the folks from Thomson Reuters who have been so helpful tpo the Task Force
Can the subgroup create something shorter and more concise and meet the various need discussed.

10:30 – 11:00 – Recommendation #2 – Policies and actions necessary to achieve ubiquitous broadband – sub-group report
• Review survey results and approve recommendations
• [Mike O’Connor, Brent Christensen, JoAnne Johnson, Diane Wells, Peg Werner, Mary Ellen Wells, Carlos Seoane]

There was a great deal of info provided through a survey. The members ranked their agreement with a wide range of specific issues. It’s great info; I’m hoping that I will be able to get a copy to post to the blog. I was going to try to go through to post the points of agreement – but I can only see abbreviated descriptions on issues on the handout, which makes it difficult to decipher.

This topic will be discussesd again and the survey will inform the next iteration of this chapter.

1:00 – 11:15 – Break

11:15 – 11:45 – Recommendation #5 – Evaluation and recommendation of security, vulnerability, and redundancy actions necessary to ensure reliability – sub-group report
• Provide updates since September meeting; finalize and agree on recommendations if possible (if not, agree on what has to happen to come to agreement)
• [Mike O’Connor, Steve Cawley, Craig Taylor, Jack Ries/Gopal Khanna, Shirley Walz]

We might want to do another poll to track agreement on these issues. Or at least use the feedback on ubiquity to inform this chapter. So maybe today we can focus on the first 1.5 pages of the chapter; work on the detailed section after digging through surveys.

Security is a major issue in the Twin Cities as it is in rural Minnesota. We need redundancy throughout the State.

In Eagan we have had security folks to talk us. The government was fairly well poised for redundant connections; the businesses were not as well poised.

We haven’t heard from the incumbents that redundancy is an issue. It’s not an issue for the education folks – on a backbone level. Maybe not all carriers have access to redundancy; but certainly some do.

We haven’t had anyone come to the Task Force to talk about the need for more connections in and out of the state; so we do need to do the homework on that issue.

We could make the study be the primary recommendation – that we need to look into the redundancy issues. That draws attention to the issue without mandating anything.

Last time we met there were concerns about how to pay for this. Have we considered that here?
We will talk about cost and financing this afternoon.

Do we want to recommend that the legislature fund this study?

Mike will be re-drafting the security chapter and will any luck we’ll get a new draft before the day is done.

11:45 – 12:30 – Recommendation #7 – Economic development opportunities & Recommendation #8 – Evaluation of how broadband access can benefit organizations and institutions
• Approve recommendations

Everyone took time to read the latest version.

Might want to change focus from access to government to government services.

The recommendations may have slipped into description of opportunities as well. Do we need that?

Might want to add civic engagement.

We need to recognize that public-private partnerships can be employed in rural and suburban areas – not just rural areas. We could prioritize rural areas – but keep the door open for partnerships throughout the State.

Maybe we can take out unserved and underserved areas when the suggestion makes sense for the whole state – especially when talking about adoption.

Maybe we need to include more on economic development in terms of added jobs, recruit, retain jobs and businesses.

When we talk about communities being unconnected – are we talking about connected with broadband, roads or otherwise?

Well in all ways. Rural areas are separated. We have our own hospital. But maybe we can change the specific sentence to “often working on their own, rural cities…” as opposed to “often unconnected…”

[lots of wordsmithing is happening that I won’t track]

Recommendation 7 is adopted!

On to recommendation 8…

More wordsmithing.

Another push to add civic engagement.

The emergence of home-based businesses has been huge. So we’ll want to add that here.

We’ll want to flesh out some of the categories a little bit too. This is really the opportunity to bring up some of these categories and we should make the most of that. We want to make sure to add public access, lifelong learners…

There’s no harm in being redundant and cross referencing points – few folks will pick up a report this large to read it; they will peruse for keywords.

We need to make allowances in libraries for number of users and cost of service.

Also we want to make clear that we’re not talking about new funding; we’re talking about reallocating money that’s already being spent.

All agreed – we’ll approve next time.

12:30 – 1:00 – Break for Lunch

Recommendation #5 – Evaluation and recommendation of security, vulnerability, and redundancy actions necessary to ensure reliability – sub-group report – Revisited

Tried a new scaled down version that focuses on the need for a study. We will also plan to have more info in the Appendix.

We need to get a team of experts to perform the study. We can recommend that study but other recommendations might be premature.

We need more urgency in regards to security – asking for a study will hopefully push that.

We need to urge network developers to factor in security.

We want the security community to start sitting together to talk about statewide security. We don’t want to mandate it – but we want to encourage it – kind of like the ISP and Tech Forums at MRNet.

We need to look at funding. Will it be state funded? Can we move money from one fund to another? Will this require a tax?

Maybe we don’t need to be too specific since it will be up to the legislature at the end of the day regardless.

Right now there’s a lot of lore out there in the security community; it would be valuable to find out what’s fact and what isn’t.

Do we need to be more vague so as to not draw attention to potential competition? (So Iowa doesn’t see our weaknesses.)

One issue is that the task force hasn’t had folks say that keeping MN traffic in MN is a problem. We want to encourage peering – but not mandate it.

Maybe we can talk about the need to keep Minnesota working in the event of major national outages.

This isn’t entirely a security issue; it also involves robust, optimized networks.

One part of this ensures reliability; it wards against vulnerability.

The Security piece is accepted

1:00 – 1:30 – Discuss sections of version 5 of the report
• Review and approve Connected Nation language (existing language on page 25)
• [Brent Christensen, Mike O’Connor, Diane Wells for any new/changed language]

94% of MN has access when you factor it with current FCC definitions of broadband (768k down; 200k up) NOT when you use the definition of broadband that the Task Force would like to include.

There is an addendum to the report that addresses the Connect Minnesota piece as well as the original mandate from the State to Connected Minnesota.

Using the minimum goal speeds they found the following:

– Zero counties meet or exceed the higher 2015 download speed target (20 mbps)
– One county currently meet or exceeds the lower 2015 download speed target (10 mbps) – that was Washington County!
– Zero counties currently meet or exceed the higher upload speed target (10 mbps)
– Zero counties currently meet or exceed the lower upload speed target (5 mbps)

It doesn’t look as if the FCC isn’t looking at changing their definition any time soon.

Everyone is OK with the Connected Minnesota Mapping Section
Source for penetration and speed measurements

We need to choose a source(s) to cite.

We could suggest the ongoing committee take a closer look at this with a critical eye.

• Expectations for raisings concerns or issues with existing content
• Agree on final report review process; discuss how full review of version 6 will work at the October 16th meeting

The next version will be version 6 and it will be much closer to a final version. We hope to get that before the next meeting. Then we’d like everyone to read it before the next meeting. We don’t want to do a lot of wordsmithing – but want to be close to be done next time.

We’d like more info on residential pricing and municipal networks.

We should indicate the difference between metro and rural prices. It indicative of the affordability problem.

1:45 – 2:45 – Recommendation #4 – Evaluation of strategies, financing, financial incentives used in other states/countries to support broadband development and Recommendation #6 – Cost estimate – sub-group report
• Review sub-group recommendations
[John Gibbs, Dan McElroy, John Stanoch, Dick Sjoberg, Diane Wells]

There’s a lot of material – much of it in the appendix. Look over everything and tell us what we’re missing. (Will be discussed in full at next meeting.)

2:45 – 3:00 – Plans for Upcoming Meetings
• October 16th and 30th at Thomson Reuters
• Report release on November 6th
o Press conference and joint legislative hearing
• November 9th breakfast event
• Blandin Conference in Duluth November 19th 10:45-11:35 a.m. – Panel

Minority report for everything but the costs/financial section are due October 9.

There’s a plan for a joint legislative meeting on November 6

3:00 – Closing comments, adjourn meeting