Today I attended the first of several broadband listening sessions with Senator Matt Schmit; this one was in North Branch. (Get details on other sessions this week.)  It was a really good session. To start there were about 25 attendees – despite -20 degrees and school closings across the state. There were broadband providers, business owners, economic developers and planners, folks in education and a reporter from the local paper. People had a lot to say. Here are a few of the topics:

• People in town have pretty good access. Although there are pockets of underserved areas. Some of those underserved areas have shaky cell phone access too. As you venture outside the city limits the broadband service degrades. People living outside the city don’t have it and it makes a difference to their quality of life. There are providers outside they city. They know the service they provide isn’t enough but it was better than nothing.
• People who can’t get broadband at home can’t telecommute. They have tried and been told it doesn’t work. They can’t fully participate in the one-to-one device/student programs at school. And that’s a problem for the family, the student and the school.
• The problem really isn’t the technology – it’s the financing. It’s hard to make a business case to serve rural area when you may have less than one household per square mile. Two costs were mentioned for deploying fiber (from 2 different providers): $5 per foot for fiber and $2000-10,000 per drop for fiber. That’s quite a range but demonstrates difficulty in rural areas. The Universal Service Fund used to pay for rural access but that’s being reshuffled. USDA loans money to telephone companies to deploy broadband – BIP was a way to get money to the markets with the least attractive market  cases.
• People have the same needs in rural areas as they have in urban areas so we need the same broadband! Internet use increase per subscriber averages 4% per month. [Ann’s note – that sounds like Moore’s Law to me; doubles every 18 months.] And there are residential and business users who have been told they can’t get what they want at any cost right now.
• Having a consistent dialog between broadband providers and other stakeholders in the state would be beneficial to communities. There has been dialog in the area with local and national providers but having someone at the state to help and to relay those conversations to other parts of the state would help Minnesota keep on track with broadband goals.
• The potential for jobs is with new small business. They need infrastructure. http://www.sba.gov/content/small-business-trends Entrepreneurs adapt to broadband available. Maybe that means an office in town. But does it weed out entrepreneurs and relocating businesses? Perhaps there are people who are quietly moving or crossing North Branch off the list because they cannot get the broadband they need here.
• Wireless is a way to reach rural areas but it’s not perfect. It isn’t future-proofed. Fiber is supposed to have a capacity shelf life of 20-30 years. People are saying 5 years for wireless but we are finding that community wide wireless is slowing down already.
• Wireless data caps are an issue for individual users. Some attendees suggested we encourage people to be more strategic in their use. Suggesting that there should be limitation on teen-type use. While others point out that video is how lots of people get information now. Locally, North Branch has a strong educational consortium (ECMECC). They allow kids to use devices on the school networks – they talk about what can they do with the broadband – not what we can’t do. And has been a game changer. But the questions still followed – should the government regulate use – or work with providers to talk about what is appropriate for regulating use – in order conserve broadband for rural needs?

Again, great discussion! Speaking with one of the attendees after the session we noted that there were no kids in the room. Really I suspect they was one person in the room under the age of 35 and that most were 50+. We noted because we both had kids and recognized that kids would be outraged at the idea of asking them to conserve broadband. Yes, kids do some silly stuff online (cat videos, snap chat…) but they also do homework, look up anything they want to know (imagine that power as a kid!) and learn how to produce online content. Throttling that throttles creativity. It would be like telling a kid to conserve paper. Yes it might stop them from doodling a little but it might stop them from starting the next great novel too. Or drawing out DNA modeling. It would be great to see some kids at the upcoming meetings. My kids are off school tomorrow – maybe the Chatfield (meeting at 8 am) or Duluth (meeting at 2 pm) are off too.

And some video from the meeting: