Thanks to John Schultz for the heads up on tonkaconnect. According to their web site…

tonkaconnect is an initiative of the Lake Minnetonka Communications Commission. Our objective is to bring community owned and operated, world-class access to television/video, Internet and telephone services to every residence, business, library, school, city, public safety organization in our members’ and affiliate cities’ areas

Lake Minnetonka Communications Commission (LMCC) actually includes the following cities (not just Minnetonka) Deephaven, Excelsior, Greenwood, Independence, Long Lake, Loretto, Maple Plain, Medina, Minnetonka Beach, Minnetrista, Orono, St. Bonifacius, Shorewood, Spring Park, Tonka Bay, Victoria and Woodland.

Earlier this month (June 5), they held a workshop on fiber to the home, which is available in video online! It’s about 2.5 hours. It starts with a basic introduction to fiber and broadband. It included a panel that featured Jeff O’Neill from Monticello, Chris Mitchell from Institute for Local Self Reliance and David Russell from Calix. They were a nice combination – especially if you’re a proponent of FTTH and municipal/community networks. Jeff knows so much from experience leading the effort in Monticello; few people know fiber as well as David and Chris recently released a research report on municipal networks.

There was a lot of discussion after the panel on the importance of broadband – recognizing that broadband isn’t a number necessarily but it means having the bandwidth you need to do what you want/need online. Finally they talk specifically about their plans to move forward. I won’t go into the details – but the lead up to the main course of technology-policy-financing makes it fairly palatable. (Or at least as palatable as something like that is going to be.)

Their next step will be going to each community to see how much interest (and money) is available in member communities to move forward. They are thinking that they will create a nonprofit organization to run the FTTH plan in association with LMCC – but they need more feasibility studies to determine if this makes sense.

The video is seems to target policy makers and community leaders – not necessarily techies. So it might be helpful for folks who are looking to get up to speed. Also despite the fact that the areas covered are pretty suburban – the issues specific to rural areas come up. Finally – the questions that folks ask near the end are also very valuable, especially to a community looking at a community-owned network.