Monthly Archives: November 2009

Jim Baller as keynote at the Blandin Broadband conference

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Here are notes and video from the Blandin Broadband Conference keynote speech by Jim Baller. Jim is a lawyer who work on broadband and telecommunications issues in Washington DC. He is instrumental in the US Broadband Coalition and their efforts to spur, create and deploy a National Broadband Strategy.

Tonight Jim spoke about his work with the US Broadband Coalition – but he started by talking about the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Task Force recommendations to the state. Specifically, he reacted to a the results of a survey we had done with conference attendees. Here is the question and responses that caught Jim’s eye:

The broadband bandwidth goal, 20 Mb downstream/10 Mb upstream by 2015, will position Minnesota as a global leader in broadband availability.
Strongly Disagree 6.3%
Disagree 18.8%
Agree 35.4%
Strongly Agree 33.3%
Don’t Know/No Opinion 6.3%

Jim’s response was strongly disagree. He used a tool to track how long it took to run specific application-based tasks on the Internet based on bandwidth. (I found a version of the tool, but it’s not in English. That being said I was able to figure it out, so I hope you will be able to as well.) It showed how some applications (such as eleanring) that would take hours at 20 Mbps took minutes at a Gig. (I know that the Task Force included a chart of applications by bandwidth in the report. How this tool and that list compare – I don’t really know.)

After Jim’s demonstration many people wanted to change their answer.

The rest of the time he spoke on the US Broadband Coalition. Here are video clips and links to clips (listed in chronoloical oder).

Jim Hoolihan introduces Nancy Aronson Norr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA6u-XTrMVM

Nancy Aronson Norr introduces Jim Baller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZyw98oo82o

Jim Baller talks about Minnesota Task Force 

Jim Baller demonstrates fiber speed tool

Jim Baller on what it will take for MN to be a world broadband leader http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-qDj1jRUU  

Jim Baller on Blandin Foundation & Broadband Task Force Report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ8CUTdZf94

Jim Baller talks about the history of broadband in the US http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh7XJEvHaZo  

Jim Baller talks about the US Broadband Coalition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPfMwalGXbY  

Jim Baller mentions spectrum, USF and other policies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h2IXUbUFIc  

Jim Baller – how do we plan for broadband future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3u_1P4dIYA  

Jim Baller on broadband mapping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAJcl3JheWQ

Blandin Broadband conference: Walking tour of Duluth

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The Blandin Broadband conference started today. It started with a walking tour of Duluth. The weather could not have been better. We got a mini-walking tour of Duluth. It was fun to see the new places –and some of the old places. We ended up at Teatro Zuccone, a new spot in town with a couple of theaters and a bar. It looks like a great place to see a show or just hang out. Apparently it just opened this fall and has been very successful.

We saw the following presentation from Drew Digby of Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) and heard from some of the locals. It was interesting to hear about what brought (or kept people in) people to Duluth. While many people enjoyed the outdoors, the arts, the size of the town, the colleges, – it was really the business opportunities that brought both people and businesses to the area.

Update on NTIA/RUS funding

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Thanks to Ann Higgins for sending an article from TeleCompetitor with what appears to be some insider news on the stimulus funding. Here are the short facts (taken pretty much straight from the article):

  1. 18 RUS BIP applicants have been notified that their applications made it to the second phase of the review process.
  2. There were 11,000 reply comments for all 2,200 applications, indicating significant incumbent challenges of unserved/underserved claims by applicants
  3. Eighty percent of all applications received at least one reply comment
  4. RUS needs to validate all challenge claims, which will lengthen the award notification process
  5. Announcements of award winners will begin ‘sometime’ in December, but the award notifications will be done on a rolling basis and will be ongoing well into 2010
  6. Campanola revealed some interesting insight into the traditional RUS loan program as well, including “over 90% of all traditional RUS loan applications last year were for FTTH projects.”
  7. As the article points out – these details indicate that a lot of work still needs to happen.

TISP Forum: Legislative Roundtable on Telecommunications Policy

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Thought folks would be interested in the following…

TISP Forum: Legislative Roundtable on Telecommunications Policy
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
12:00 to 1:30 PM
Room 180
HHH Institute of Public Affairs

As we look toward the next legislative session, Rep. Sheldon Johnson, Chair, Telecommunications and Infrastructure Division, MN House of Representatives, and legislative colleagues will lead a discussion on important issues in broadband policy and economic development in Minnesota. Items up for discussion include the recent MN Broadband Report, the prospects for statewide franchising and the impact of the telephone referendum requirement on broadband entry.

Please join us for this event. Brown bag lunch welcome.
Soda, coffee and cookies provided.

Ramsey County – St. Paul Community Broadband Summit

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Just a quick note on an upcoming event…

Ramsey County – St. Paul Community Broadband Summit

Investing in broadband is critical to the future of our region and your organization has an important role in designing that future. The Knight Center of Digital Excellence, in partnership with Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul, invite you to participate in the Community Broadband Summit with other local leaders from business, government, health care, education, social services and arts & culture organizations to share your ideas about maximizing the impact broadband can have across our community.

Thursday, December 3, 2009
8:30 am to 2:30 pm
James J. Hill Reference Library, St. Paul

For questions or additional information please contact Rich Weiss at 216.923.2234 or rweiss@knightcenter.org.

Collaboration & Copyright & a New Way to Work

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If you provide or create content online, you should know about Creative Commons. The short explanation, from their blog is, “The Creative Commons licenses enable people to easily change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” It’s a good way to share info – whether you’re the creator, borrower or buyer.

Bernadine Joselyn sent me an article that highlights the need for and application of Creative Commons and talks about how the Creative Commons opens a door to innovation. It’s a good example of how the Internet (and broadband) have changed traditional business models. Before the Internet, everyone seemed to work in silos; since the advent of the Internet, most successful businesses work more collaboratively. Google is the prime example. Google creates tools that are intended to work in most environments for free, such as Gmail, Google Maps or Google Analytics for web statistics. They have gone so far as it open up some of their code to developers around the world, making it possible for developers to make improvements to Google tools as well as create entirely new tools.

Before the Internet, businesses seemed to think that such openness would devalue their products or services; in a post Internet world, openness adds value. Businesses that have understood and acted on that shift in openness have flourished; those who are still playing according to the old rules are dying on the vine. The Creative Commons has been able to step in to help some businesses take advantage of the openness.

I thought about that transition into openness last weekend when I was at the TMCA Fall Conference. We heard from several traditional media resources that are creating intriguing media web sites that encourage reader interaction. That focus on interaction is great and a nod at the changes brought about by the Internet – but most of the sites we saw stopped short of being truly open. They will not be opening up their code at this point and they are not creating ways to interact with other web site. I contrast this with the new media tools – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs – which seem to be finding more and more ways to work seamlessly together – or at least allow users to work seamless with multiple tools.

If you think about broadband a lot, it’s tough not to make the connection between this story and net neutrality. What we need is a new business model that makes sense for broadband providers and users. To quote the article on Creative Commons, “while the technology is frictionless, the collaboration faces another hurdle”.

MACTA & NTIA/RUS RFI on broadband stimulus programs

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The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) is preparing comments to send to the NTIA/RUS on how best to administer the second round of funding for the programs in order to improve the applicant experience and maximize the ability of the programs to meet Recovery Act objectives. (As you may recall, the NTIA/RUS requested such comments.)

Jodie Miller, MACTA Legislative co-chair and NATOA board member, is inviting folks in Minnesota to send feedback to her to help inform the NATOA comments to the NTIA/RUS. The goal is to incorporate as many Minnesota perspectives as possible. If you have a comment, please send it to her before November 20 info@mactamn.org.

What about mobile broadband and cell coverage?

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rural phoneWhat about mobile broadband and cell coverage? It’s question that has come up quite a bit for me lately. I don’t have an answer but I had a few moments in the last two weeks to realize that tackling it will help bridge a digital divide and ignoring it is going to widen it.

To start, I had an interesting email conversation from John Shepard about a week ago. He had been to a meeting of economical developers from Southwest Minnesota when one employer pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and said “this is no longer a luxury. It is essential for every one of my employees”. Someone at the meeting else noted that, “We talk a lot about broadband, but nobody under age XX is tethered to a cable anymore”. His experience complemented a conversation I had had in Owatonna talking to a group of manufacturers. We were talking about social media. None of them blogged and none of them tweeted but they all read texts from employees. Texts were easy to send and easy to receive; texting required no training nor more time on the computer. They all had their phones or handhelds on their hips.

Our conversations seemed to fall in line with Representative Juhnke’s comments to the Ultra High Speed Task Force and their recommendations (about minute 55 of video of the Nov 6 Presentation and overview of final report of the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force). He was pretty passionate about the need for mobile broadband coverage and even cell coverage throughout the state and asked about wireless access. The Task Force Chair (Rick King) addressed the question by talking about how they were technology neutral – and so long as wireless can maintain speed goals (4Gwill, 3G can sometimes) they support it, which I think makes sense from the perspective of the report – but Junke’s question was even more basic he spoke of the “two Minnesotas”; one where you can’t get cell coverage. I think it’s difficult for many of us to imagine living there. As he brought up – who is going to move a business to an area without full cell coverage? Juhnke promoted uniform deployment of all services across the state.

Ann Higgins, who is always timely, sent me an article that echoed Rick’s point and hit on the need for ubiquitous and fast coverage. The article focused on the progression towards 802.11n wireless – the  reasons driving that progress are important here too, “Because more powerful and bandwidth intensive applications that stream video are demanded from sources like the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace, the importance of Wi-Fi is growing considerably.”

Finally, I noticed that the mobile broadband question was raised in the recent report by the US Broadband Coalition as well:

Mobile broadband access is growing in prevalence and popularity, both as a primary and as secondary for of Internet access. Recent research shows that African Americans and Hispanics are much more
active in using wireless devices to connect to the Internet and data services than others. While there is general consensus that some applications and services are better suited to mobile broadband connectivity and other are better suited fixed connections and larger devices, there is little study to access the merits of using mobile broadband devices and connections as a primary vehicle for digital inclusion populations.

Again I don’t have an answer – but wanted to raise the question.

Expanding and Accelerating the Adoption & Use of Broadband Throughout the Economy

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On Friday the 13th, the US Broadband Coalition released their most recent report, Expanding and Accelerating the Adoption & Use of Broadband Throughout the Economy: A report of the adoption and use working group: US Broadband Coalition: Policy Options to the Federal Communications Commission. I’m giving the whole title as it gives a lot of context.

The report builds upon the Coalition’s initial suggestions for a National Rural Policy released last September. According to the recent report, “The mission of the Adoption and Use Group was to investigate why residential, commercial, and institutional users do or do not use the Internet; to examine how broadband connections to the Internet can facilitate, expand, and improve such use; and to develop as much agreement as possible on promising approaches to increase adoption and use of broadband connectivity.”

The report starts out recognizing the importance of broadband on a household and community level. It promotes Federal and state support such as programs, grants, subsidies, and other measures that foster broadband connectivity, computer access, education, and training and that address barriers to effective use of broadband. They organize adoption efforts into 5 categories:

• Bridging the Digital Divide
• Addressing the Broadband Adoption Gap for People with Disabilities
• Increasing the Intensity Of Broadband Use In Core Sectors of Our Economy
• Raising the Bar on Skills and Ease of Use
• Accelerating Innovation

The report details recommendations for policy and actions that would support improvements in each area. What’s nice is that much of what they’ve outlined is in agreement with the recommendations made a week earlier by the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force. Both recognize the importance on ubiquitous access. Both recognize the importance of improving adoption rates through training, subsidized computers and increasing relevance.

I thought that the most valuable section talked about increasing broadband use in core sectors because it focuses on broadband as a solution – not a requirement. I know I’ve talked about this from the schools perspectives before – but when I was an undergraduate we had to pass a computer literacy test to graduate. I hated it. It was just about the only time as an undergraduate that I used a computer! I learned whatever I needed to know for the test and that was it. I hadn’t really become a user.

Fast forward 4 years to graduate school – there was no computer literacy test, but there was an expectation that you could use a computer. Computers use had increased and intensified so that we all took it upon ourselves to learn how to use them. That’s not to say that access and training aren’t valuable – they are – but motivation is the key. Framing broadband (and the technology it drives) as a solution is a key motivator for an individual, community or country.

Minnesota Broadband Task Force Report still ripples

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The Ultra Hig-Speed Task Force recommendations are still get media attention, which is great. I think a goal for those of us who support broabdand is to keep it and the Task Force recommendations in the news as long as possible – and to help it bubble up again during the legislative seesion.

Here are some of the places I’ve seen it crop up in the last week:

Almanac North (Duluth, TV) – Task Force Chair, Rick King, Senator Yvonne Prettner Solon and Bill Coleman from Community Technology Advisors (consultatnt to the Blandin Foudnation) talk about the recommednation on their television show.

Broadband Task Force report mixes wants, needs (St Cloud Times) – describes the Task Force speed goal as lofty, and compares it to “the automotive equivalent of providing every resident with a Cadillac”

Broadband editorial in Lake County

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An editorial in yesterday’s Lake County News-Chronicle champions Minnesota as a possible national leader in rural broadband. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial, but it’s definitely worth reading the whole thing!

Minnesota is no stranger to demanding that rural areas have the technological advantages of metropolitan areas. In the 1920s, the state led the way in proving that bringing electricity to farms was viable. Electric companies then feared they would never recoup the costs to build a rural grid. There were soon electric co-operatives across the state.

The example set in the state proved a model for President Roosevelt’s Rural Electric Administration in 1935 that brought the technology across the nation.
While it’s nice to see that state gumption again from the broadband task force, too many times we’ve seen businesses leave out our rural areas when it comes to today’s technology. Dead zones remain when it comes to cell phone coverage. Only now are there plans for towers in Finland and Isabella in Lake County.

The slow pace of providing what is now a basic service can’t happen when it comes to internet service. With Lake County’s work on broadband, we can stay ahead of the curve and perhaps prove to internet companies that rural areas are a market.

New Media, Technology & Internet Use in Indian Country

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On November 19, 2009, Native Public Media and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative will release New Media, Technology and Internet Use in Indian Country: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses, one of the most extensive studies of on the ground technology use, access, and adoption in Native American lands. Demonstrating the great need to include Native Americans in the discourse around the National Broadband Plan, the report combines both a survey of Native American technology use amongst 120 tribes, normed against other national surveys, and in-depth case studies of six successful projects exhibiting Digital Excellence in Native America.

The report will be released at an event jointly hosted by Native Public Media and the Open Technology Initiative in Washington DC. Get Details.

RFP for wireless services for Itasca County

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Itasca County is planning to leverage its 800 Mhz public safety network investment to improve local broadband services for the sheriff’s department, communities and residents. The county has issued an RFP for wireless Internet providers to outline how towers, owned by the county, could be used to deliver wireless Internet. A vendor meeting is scheduled for 2 pm this Thursday (November 12) in Grand Rapids.

 

Extend Universal Service Fund to Broadband

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The Universal Service Fund money comes from telecommunications providers based an assessment of their interstate and international revenues. It goes to subsidize telecommunications service (phones) to low income programs and high-cost areas and services (broadband) schools and libraries and towards rural health care.

USF came up yesterday at the MHTA meeting on the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force. John Stanoch of Qwest brought it up and mentioned that if restructured the USF could help support broadband access to un/underserved areas.

There’s good news. According to MulitChannel News, “House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) is circulating a draft of a bill that would extend the Universal Service Fund to broadband and set a minimum speed of service to qualify for the subsidy.” (Thanks to Ann Higgins for sending the article.)

The plan is to relook at the Fund, which has not grown with the times and kept up with both growing demand for broadband and diversity of telecommunications/communications carriers. Here’s more info taken from the article:

The bill, The Universal Service Reform Act, would require fund recipients to offer broadband at a download rate of 1.5 mbps within five years. That’s twice the FCC’s current definition of high speed, but less than many parties argue will be necessary for some of the bandwidth-hunger apps either in the market or on the drawing board.
Contributions would be based on revenues, phone numbers, or a combination of the two, with that call left up to the FCC. If it chooses revenues, those can be based on intrastate, interstate and “foreign” services.

The fund will create a competitive bidding process for wireless carriers and cap the total growth, with a couple of exceptions. One will be the closing of the so-called “parent trap.” The fund has heretofore capped the payments to a carrier who buys phone exchanges to the amount the previous owner was getting. That rule would be eliminated in the hopes of spurring sales to rural carriers.

I suspect that details such as download rate requirements might be best left elusive (or maybe penciled in) until the National Broadband Plan is set – but I like to see that these things are being considered. Because USF is an existing funding structure, I think it’s easier for many to look at restructuring it than starting from scratch with something completely different.

Future of NTIA/RUS broadband funding

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It’s official, NTIA/RUS today announced they are streamlining the ARRA’s broadband grant and loan programs by awarding the remaining funding in just one more round, instead of two rounds, to increase efficiency and better accommodate applicants. Not unexpected, but now official.

The agencies expect to begin announcing funding first round awards in December 2009.

The agencies also announced they are seeking public comment on how best to administer the second round of funding for the programs in order to improve the applicant experience and maximize the ability of the programs to meet Recovery Act objectives.