Owatonna’s People’s Press recently ran an editorial from Mike Martin, executive director of the Minnesota Cable Communications Association and Brent Christensen, president of the Minnesota Telephone Alliance. Both are supportive of the $20 million broadband development fund. Both represent industry and celebrate the progress that industry has made in investing in broadband across the state…

As telecommunications stakeholders — including the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband, members of the media, legislators and the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development — continue to look at ways to improve our state’s broadband coverage, it is important to remember that Minnesota has great coverage today with 98 percent of all homes and businesses with service levels at or above the FCC’s definition of broadband. Almost 90 percent of homes have access to broadband at speeds of 10 mbps download/ 3 mbps upload. These numbers continue to improve with each construction season.

Their hiccup with the broadband fund is that both underserved and unserved communities are eligible…

While this new fund has a role to play in helping expand broadband coverage, Minnesotans will be best served if these funds are dedicated toward areas of our state that lack service today. And, with a 50 percent match required, the state’s telecommunications industry looks forward to leveraging these new grant funds to expand in areas of our state that currently do not have service. Leveraging these public funds with private investment will foster the right kind of partnerships to expand coverage. This is the most cost-effective approach, and it will guarantee long-term success in these areas.

What’s the difference between served and unserved? Unserved areas do not meet the FCC definition of broadband, which is 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps up. Underserved areas do not meet the State definition of 10-20 Mbps down and 5-10 Mbps up. (Regardless of where the community sits today, the proposed improvements must be scalable to 100 Mbps; so funding shouldn’t go to solutions that move a community only from unserved to underserved.)

Right now the Office of Broadband Development (OBD) is touring Minnesota talking about the grant; I’ve been to a number of those meetings and plan to attend the meeting in Owatonna tomorrow. While the details of the grant have not been finalized, it seems like they are pretty close and that applications in unserved areas will be weighted more than underserved areas, but it is just part of the equation that will help the OBD rank success applications. Other factors include good business plans, good story to tell, readiness, geographic distribution, residents served, anchor institutions served, digital inclusion component and local match.

I have seen a range of providers attend the information sessions on the grants. I think that a community with a willing provider is probably in good shape for applying for funds, assuming the provider has plans and is will to provide (or help provide) the match. A few providers who attended the meetings pointed out that the funding in question isn’t a large percentage of most build-out projects but it just might be enough to start a discussion, to get community support to spur some local digital inclusion initiatives that help promote higher adoption in currently underserved and unserved areas – and it might also help the investment pay off – for the community, the provider and the OBD