I am posting the following email with permission from the author. (I was copied on the email as it was sent to the PUC.) I’m leaving in the names of the companies because it wouldn’t take most readers long to figure out the players. (Dassel isn’t that big.) I’m not leaving the names in because I think this problem is unique to the players below. I just think that the author (John Hoaglun) brings up a good point. The problem isn’t the technology. I think it’s really a matter of no one taking the time to look at a map with an eye towards where is the low hanging fruit in terms of low cost broadband improvement. And I don’t think that’s an intentional oversight so much as it’s a sign of a busy company where no one is assigned the task of looking for these opportunities. (Also I used to answer these calls while working for an ISP. Sometimes the problems were too many moving pieces, fast growth and no time for the right hand to talk to the left.)

I think of this in light of the new Office of Broadband Development, the mapping available and the proposed $100 million of State funds for broadband deployment. I wonder if there might be a way to leverage those funds to get companies to look for these sorts of opportunities. Maybe Dassel is in a unique position – but maybe not. I think of it a little like a new rule instituted in my house – no one gets new clothes until they clean out space in their drawers for them. Maybe no provider gets funding for new infrastructure until he maximizes existing infrastructure.

No I don’t know how this would be managed – but I think I’d start with pizzas, maps on white boards and a lot of lead engineers. I’m only half joking there. Engineers solve problems and I think if there was a way to encourage them to get in a room to help pick the low hanging technical fruit that it just might get done – or at least we’d have an idea of how much fruit is out there and what policies or incentives might help get the job done.

I am interested in filing a complaint with the MNPUC related to CenturyLink.

I live in Kingston, MN 55325 which is about 8 miles north of Dassel, MN aka: rural MN an hour west of the metro area. CenturyLink is the incumbent telecom in our community and boarders up with Arvig to our north (formally Melrose Telecom.) Both CenturyLink and Arvig provide telephony services to this community and overlap their coverage to a certain degree. They both have switching facilities in our town.

I have been trying to work with CenturyLink (formally Embarq, formally Sprint) to bring DSL to our town.

• The folks on the phone in the call centers are clueless and don’t have access to their corporate deployment roadmap.
• They don’t have a good process to move requests like this to their management or engineering teams. in fact they don’t do a good job tracking the requests as they had no record of my repeated requests over the years.
• I eventually tracked down the contact information for their lead engineer in Minnesota a number of years ago and he indicated that no additional network build out was required as they have all of the network capacity in the ground that they need to provide broadband to the areas serviced by our local switch. He indicated that it was a matter of adding a couple of cards to the switch a couple of hours of labor and they could have DSL ready to service the residents within 15,000 feet of the switch. 8 years later nothing has changed.

I contacted Melrose telecom and was able to eventually track down their lead engineer. I talked him about the same time as the other lead engineer (above.)

• Melrose provides DSL from the north down a southerly path (MN15) into the northern end of our town. Their switch has DSL capacity and they have been providing customers here for many years.
• Their pedestal comes within one block of my house and sits 24 inches from the CenturyLink pedestal. BUT, Melrose (now Arvig) does not have a the proper agreement with Centurylink (Embarq at that time) to cross over to deliver DSL. —It is not a technical issue, it is a political/corporate issue.

So CenturyLink as an incumbent carrier has NO direct competition in our community and they are resistant to provide services that are common and expected in any environment that has competition. —As a consumer we have no alternative that is competitive in this scenario. This is not a technical issue… CenturyLink is actively choosing to deliver services that are below customer expectations for 2014.  They were unwilling to engage in a dialog so that another provider could deliver the service that they were unwilling to provide. That is a monopolistic approach for a publicly licensed utility service.

The MNPUC is one of the agencies that reviews and grants their licensing and business related requests.  The MMPUC should also be the place that a consumer can engage when our utility services are not successfully making the grade. Centurylink does not make this type conversation easy to work with them on as there is not a good mechanism to us for the engagement and collaboration.

This is not even a conversation about houses in the middle of no-where and a lack of density. This is community with about 160 people (40ish homes) must of which are close enough to the telco switch to get service. CenturyLink wants to collect our money for their POTS (plain old telephone service) with their 1960’s & 70’s era services but is unwilling to put a couple of network cards into their switch to bring us to a 1990’s level of technology and service.

Please help us get this dialog going and to get some collaboration in motion. This is exact type of communications and technology challenge that rural America and rural Minnesota are facing and something that the MNPUC can help resolve. This is NOT $100,000 or $1,000,000 types of costs… we are talking about basic infrastructure that in a competitive environment would have been dealt with 20 years ago.

Thanks, JH
John Hoaglun
Kingston, MN