Last Friday Senator Schmit visited Willmar to follow-up on his earlier broadband listening tour. This was more of a result tour as Senator Schmit told folks about the broadband fund and encouraged them to get ready to apply. Willmar was the last stop during a week of visits. There were more than two dozen people in attendance – providers, policymakers and local stakeholders.

People shared good questions and enthusiasm with other communities the Senator had visited earlier in the week. It was Dan Richter’s speech that caught my interest. Dan owns MVTV Wireless and is on the Minnesota Broadband Task Force. He is a community-focused provider. He speaks about broadband in the state; his goal is to bring broadband where no one else is – the rural areas.

He admits that he didn’t originally approve of the broadband funding but has been won over due to the importance of broadband and the potential role that government can have in supporting a necessary utility.

Thursday afternoon last week, Senator Schmit met with folks in Mora as a follow-up to his broadband listening tour last winter. They have some pretty specific and detailed questions. Most are on the video; I’ve included written notes too.

• Matching (CAF) funds? Just note that the feds may not allow state match and think about applications based on best fit for state or federal funds
• How can we time everything? DEED and Office of Development is planning meetings in late summer to discuss timing, which may be early fall.
• What would the ideal application look like? Good partnerships with community institutes and providers, evidence of collaboration, strong economic impact, built for long-term. Model projects would be nice.
• Does it have to be FTTH? Middle mile and last mile projects are OK. We need infrastructure that scales to 100 Mbps.
• If multiple providers apply to one area – does the one offering the greater speed get the contract? It does need to be scalable to 100 Mbps. And talk to providers to work on getting one application per area that would be beneficial.
• One issue is cost of broadband. That’s an issue. In rural areas we pay more for broadband as providers. We need to pass those costs onto the users. Maybe we can work with the upstream providers to bring down the cost to rural providers.
• Does the Connect MN map include national wireless providers such as Verizon? They are looking at that. We are looking at wireline services.
• Bonding for broadband when we have 10 percent unemployment is really hard. Can we get creative about funding?
• If the goal is to serve 100 Mbps and you want to reach remote areas … it seems like there still won’t be enough to get the end customers connected. $5 million might get you to the tower but that’s it. It’s just not enough.

Thursday started with another meeting with Senator Schmit talking with about a dozen people in Annadndale about the Office of Broadband Development and $20 million broadband fund that they will administer. There were policymakers (Senator Bruce Anderson, city council members and mayor), folks from local business and the school, a few folks from te Cities and no providers. The lack of provider participation may have been coincidence or it may be reflection Annandale’s situation.

Annandale has been working to expand broadband – by upgrading connections and expanding to areas outside the city limits. Also they  complain of outages that apparently can last for days! They have experienced the impact of poor connectivity. They had one business leave to go to Buffalo and they know that if they don’t remedy the situation, they’ll see more of it. And they feel they are holding their businesses back because they can’t get the connectivity that allows them to get to the next level providing service to their customers

The community seems driven to pursue better broadband but frustration by the barriers they’ve encountered.

Here’s a hugely paraphrased version of what they said…

We find a defensiveness in the industry. We have heard untruths spread in the legislature about what we’re trying to do. We don’t have providers in the area who are interested in working with us. If we were looking for 4/1 service, we could get providers. We might even be able to get providers to come in to offer 10/5 access. But we want to be more forward looking. The industry is telling us we don’t need the higher speeds and we are telling them that we do. There’s an impasse. We don’t want to run a network but we do want the better broadband. And we want service beyond the city limits.

We are afraid that we will be overlooked by funders because we look like we are better served than we actually are. You can buy service – but you don’t always get the service advertised. The question is how can we prove that we don’t get the advertised speeds. Outages are another way we’re underserved –and when we go out we’re out for days.

We have found that accountability has been a big issue. We need to address accountability in the state.

We have met with 4 providers. One is a public municipality. The others are private cable; two indicated that there weren’t very interested. We had concerns with the network proposed to us; we wanted fiber and we wanted a network that reached beyond the city. We asked them what it would take to make the changes we wanted. That conversation dried up.

They also had some questions:

How will speed get measured? We have a rolling brown out in Annandale. We are offered speeds but we don’t actually see them.

The Connect MN maps aren’t perfect – but they are a great start. We encourage you to look at the maps and contact Connect MN if you run into issues with the map. We are asking the OBD to make decisions; the maps will inform those decisions but OBD will have the opportunity to follow up. Most areas will have a mixed bag of speeds: served, underserved and unserved.

Is it your intent to talk about this through your legislative tenure?

It’s an important issue.

We want to partner with someone but haven’t been successful yet.

We are much further down the path than many communities. Will that help or hinder us

Each community will come to the process from a different place

We need additional engineering work to get the numbers we need to make a business case. We need to find more partners. We’re looking at an RFP process oo.

More than a dozen people met in the Aitkin County Courthouse to talk about broadband with Senator Matt Schmit today. Four providers were in attendance (Mille Lacs Energy, Century Link, CTC & Frontier), a few politicians (Senator Schmit, Rep Sondra Erickson and Rep Joe Radinovich) and county economic developers. This was a follow up with communities who were brave enough to come out in the severe cold in January to discuss the need for broadband. It was an opportunity for folks to ask questions about the broadband fund. Senator Schmit made the point that funding will be made available, the priority is unserved areas and the competition is going to be stiff. So if you’re thinking about applying for funds, it would make sense to start the discussion now.

It was also a great opportunity for policymakers to ask questions of the providers. I was most interested in what they had to say. Someone asked the providers if the fund could help support existing business plans. Yes! They said. The providers have plans. They know how much it will cost to reach every home in their service area. I have not heard a provider say this in the past. I think it’s a good sign that the broadband fund may open the door to some frank discussions among policymakers, provider and community stakeholders about what really needs to happen to build border to order broadband.

Providers are interested in funding and plan to incorporate it into their normal business plan equations. It will help deploy faster to areas where the business case is otherwise difficult to make. The providers also mentioned that while the money is helpful, it’s not the only way government can help. As discussed in the video (and previously on the blog) providers would also appreciate a smoother path for processing and permits…

Senator Schmit is visiting a few towns this week. I hope to meet up with them again on Wednesday and will report in. It will be interesting to see if different communities have different questions.

(Read on for more detailed notes on the meeting.) Continue reading →