In tandem with the Broadband conference, Blandin is releasing two reports this week.

Jack Geller at The EDA Center, University of Minnesota, Crookston wrote Report: MIRC Communities Baseline Study: A study evaluating broadband adoption in 11 rural MN communities. We have a had a few sneak peeks that distilled some of the outcomes – but the report released today focuses on the MIRC communities and how they currently measure up in terms of broadband adoption. A couple of weeks ago Jack presented the advance report to the Blandin Broadband Strategy Board. He was kind enough to allow me to share his presentation here.

Also we published A Community Guide to Broadband Policy: a Comparison of Minnesota and federal broadband policy work. I worked on this report and tried to take a look at how the state recommendations worked with the National Broadband Policy and how a community could use both to inform their own community broadband planning. I recently gave a presentation to the MIRC community about the report – although for the presentation I added the ITU’s international recommendations. I thought that it might help give context for the report so I’m sharing it here too.