Monthly Archives: October 2015

Cooperatives are poised to increase broadband: such as in Renville and Sibley Counties

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The Daily Yonder recently ran an article from Craig Settles on the power of cooperative to serve broadband to very rural markets. He points out that there are currently 27 coops in the US with fiber networks. Yet there are 900 coops nationwide. That’s a lot of coop potential!

He uses a quote from Minnesota’s own Mark Erickson to explain the unique advantages of a coop model…

Telephone and electricity co-ops are well suited to enter the broadband business. “Co-ops are private entities that have to break even and put aside money to fund expansion, but they exist to maximize benefits, not maximize profits,” states Mark Erickson, Winthrop, MN EDA Director and a key champion to a project headed by RS Fiber Cooperative in Minnesota. The co-op was specifically created to meet communications needs. “There’s direct accountability to the community because members can have a say in how the network is managed and used, as well as a share in the profits.”

And coops have a political advantage over municipal networks – especially in states that have legal restrictions that make it more difficult for a community to provide broadband. Minnesota does have restrictions – Minn. Stat. § 237.19 requires a supermajority voter approval for the provision of local phone service by a local unit of government, and clarifying county and state bonding authority. Cooperatives do not have such restrictions – again RS Fiber is used as an example…

A unique partnership between RS Fiber and 10 cities is proving successful in Minnesota, which also has restrictions on public networks. The cities sold a General Obligation bond that they used to underwrite a loan to RS Fiber. The co-op leveraged the loan to raise more investment money.

RS Fiber retained Hiawatha Broadband Communications, a local ISP, to oversee all network buildout, operations and marketing. A fiber backbone will connect the 10 towns. During the three years it will take to complete the buildout, the co-op will provide 25-megabit symmetrical wireless and telephone services to the cities. In 2018 RS Fiber will ask the cities to pass another bond to finance the remaining buildout to take in surrounding farmlands. In total the entire network will cover over 600 miles and 2500 farm sites.

Generations on Line: helping seniors get comfortable with iPads

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I’m always pleased to see a new digital inclusion tool that’s free and looks pretty cool. I learned about the following from Frank Odasz, who will be working with Native American youth at the upcoming Broadband conference (Nov 18-20).

The program from Generations on Line is a technology training tool for seniors on how to use iPads and other devices. It is intended to be used with facilitated training but very self-directed. It would be perfect for a group setting or maybe a library of public computer center. The facilitator would be most helpful getting folks going and acting as back up if questions came up. Here’s a description from their press release…

 A new free program to help close the digital divide is being offered beginning today nationwide from the award-winning leader in digital literacy for older adults. …

This is for those who have never touched a tablet or a mouse or are insecure in using the Internet, email or APPS. “In the first 45 minutes they are navigating the device and experiencing the wonders of interconnectivity,” Ms. Dichter said. “With large type and plain English instructions on every screen, these tutorials serve as a recipe to be followed, so nothing has to be remembered. We have helped more than 80,000 seniors in 49 states and Canada over the past 15 years with PC training. Today we are making the new tablet (iPad or Android) programs, as well as the PC training and the coaching support aids, free to any institution that is willing to offer them free to their patrons.” The PC programs are also available in Spanish through a generous grant from IBM.

Organization who work with elders can sign up for a free license. It looks like there’s a fee for a user to download directly.

 

 

Thinking about a Hack in your community? This bibliography might help

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Months ago I told myself I’d create a How to Tool for developing Hacks in rural areas. Then I got busy and distracted but sometimes that’s a good thing. I realized that there was no need to recreate the wheel. Instead of creating another wheel, I’ve compiled a bibliography of wheels that I thought were pretty darned good.

I’ve been involved with hack in metro and rural areas. These mostly focus on hack in general, which by default means urban. But I have links to some of our rural Minnesota events that will give a flavor of rural. I think the main difference is critical mass. It’s easy to get more people to attend an event in the Cities – I think that’s true whether you’re talking about a Hack, a concert or a wedding. But it can be easier to get to local media and schools to promote the event in a rural setting. And of course you might promote to techies (or others) in the Cities to attend the event. You might spread the word via Open Twin Cities, Nonprofit Tech Talk, Open Minnesota – maybe others have suggestions they want to add to the comments below.

Otherwise, here’s the bibliography (you can download it in Word too):

Hack Bibliography

Explaining Hacks to Others

Tactical Checklists

Strategizing for Hacks

Mille Lacs County feasibility study: textbook case of haves and have-nots

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I want to thank Mille Lacs County for sharing their feasibility study (by CCG Consulting and Dain International financially supported by Blandin Foundation) . It is 144 pages of detail! But I think it’s very well done. I wanted to share the executive summary because – while as the summary says, each community is different and each solution is different – I think we can learn a lot about the different moving pieces involved with expanding broadband in ANY county by digging into the specifics of one county. It talks about the impact of the terrain, the incumbents, the needs and enthusiasm of the resident and the CAF 2 funding – which again as the report points out is a game changer!

If your community is thinking about broadband – the Mille Lacs feasibility study might help you figure out some really good questions to ask. If you’re a policymaker, the study just might help you better understand the practicalities of the technology – and especially with the CAF 2 funding the potential unintended consequences of policy and funding decisions.

Probably what is most important to understand about the county is how poor the broadband is in the rural areas. The alternatives in those areas are poor or non-existent. And when there are alternatives, like using satellite data or cell phone data, the broadband is expensive and has very small stingy monthly data caps. Since over half of the residents in the county live in these poor broadband areas this is a major problem for the county and one that is going to put you at an economic disadvantage to your neighboring counties as they find broadband solutions. The county is a textbook example of broadband haves and have-nots. You either live in the cities or near the lake and have broadband or else you don’t.

But we found that it would be a financial challenge to build fiber everywhere. It’s not impossible, but there are several factors that make a business plan a challenge here. First is the geography. The river in the middle of the County means that a network has to be built on both the east and west side of the County, which costs more than what we would have expected in looking at the square miles of the County.

Second, we found that the people in most of the cities today have broadband with which they are probably happy. Certainly some of them would love to be on a fiber network, but the question is: can you count on enough of them to make the business plan work? The financial analysis shows that you’d need at least a 46% penetration rate in the cities just to make the business plan reach breakeven, and you’d want to do better than that. If you want to consider fiber everywhere you’d have to conduct a thorough canvass to make sure that enough customers would support fiber.

Third. There was a change in the rural broadband picture since the time that we started the study. These areas today have basically no broadband, or else broadband that is expensive and that suffers from low monthly data caps. These areas are ripe for a broadband solution. But in late August, as we were wrapping up this report, both Frontier and CenturyLink accepted federal money from the FCC’s Connect America Fund to improve the DSL for the rural parts of the county to 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. Even by today’s standards that is not great broadband and it is going to be obsolete almost before it is built. But it might be just good enough so that some rural households might not elect to change to a new network. You need a 62% penetration in the rural areas to justify fiber and that seems like a high hurdle considering these DSL upgrades.

Finally, some parts of the county either already have fiber or will soon get it. Milaca has already been overbuilt with fiber from Milaca Local Link, and the Benton Cooperative Telephone Company is planning to overbuild Bock and the surrounding area with fiber in a few years. If you take Milaca out of the business plan the needed breakeven penetration rate for fiber for everywhere else gets even higher.

In light of the challenges to build fiber in the rural areas we suggest a solution to build a carrier-class point-to-multipoint wireless network just for the rural areas. The biggest issue with doing a point-tomultipoint wireless network is the heavy tree cover and foliage in the county. But there are ways to work around that. We’ve recommended using a new spectrum that the FCC is just about to release in the 3.65 MHz range that carries through trees a little better than the other spectrum available today. Plus we’ve assumed that you would build tall towers and also use telescoping poles at each customer house to enable a direct sight to a tower. This network will deliver speeds up to 30 Mbps download to customers. There is an even better spectrum on the horizon called white space spectrum that the FCC is expected to release that could offer speeds of almost 50 Mbps.
Further, the wireless business plan can spin off significant profits over the years and it looks to us that if it’s operated well you could eventually use the profits from the wireless business to then build fiber in the rural parts of the county. It might take 15–20 years to get fiber everywhere, but it’s a financially and technically viable plan. Customers could get real broadband today with the goal of eventually upgrading to fiber.

We’ve recommended that the best business structure for the new business is a cooperative. This form of business has advantages over the alternatives. Probably the biggest advantage is that, since a cooperative is owned by the customers of the business, it can maintain the focus needed to eventually get fiber. Any alternative business structure that is for-profit would expect to pay profits to the owners and operators of the business, and as such would probably never have enough cash to replace wireless with fiber.

We’ve made numerous other specific recommendations that are also important, but the above are the primary take-aways from this study. We have provided a very specific list of next steps that ought to be taken if you want to go from this feasibility study and work towards a solution.

Gigabit Minnesota expands Fiber Network to 250+ New Homes in Rosemount

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Good news for folks in Rosemount…

Gigabit Minnesota expands Fiber Network to 250+ New Homes in Rosemount

(Rosemount, MN) (October 26, 2015) – Gigabit Minnesota is making good on a Vision for bringing Fiber Internet Services to Rosemount first stated in 2000. Gigabit Minnesota is the new owner of FTTH Communications, the former subsidiary of the development company who developed the Evermoor community in Rosemount. In 2000, FTTH promised Fiber to the Home to the residents of Evermoor and the rest of the community of Rosemount. After three owners and 15 years, Gigabit Minnesota is delivering on this promise.

Gigabit Minnesota purchased the former FTTH Communications in July of 2104 and is expanding the fiber services to the first new areas of Rosemount in over 6 years. Jim Hickle, President of Gigabit Minnesota and its Parent Company Velocity Telephone Inc., is a 22+ year resident of Rosemount and is on a mission to bring Fiber to his home town. I have had poor Internet service since I have lived here and I have heard all the reasons why, “I don’t need faster Internet” from my current providers, said Jim Hickle, and I think it is time I had the option for the speed I need to live and work from my home.
When we acquired FTTH, we first had to fix and replace the equipment and services that had been neglected throughout the previous three owners. The base fiber infrastructure was in place, but the equipment was from the time when FTTH was in its infancy and it was failing to provide the services and speed necessary in today’s Internet dependent world. We have started replacing this “old” equipment with Gigabit capable equipment and are now offering the fastest, most reliable Internet in Rosemount to the original Evermoor areas and now to even more areas of Rosemount.

The new areas include the new housing developments of Falmoor Glen, Prestwick and Greystone in eastern Rosemount. This is the largest expansion of the Fiber network in Rosemount since the original developer started FTTH in 2000. This is step 1 in our goal to bring fiber to Rosemount. As a small Minnesota owned and self funded communications company we do not have access to the government subsidies and legacy customer bases who are overpaying for the mediocre services that my competitors do. We build services with money out of our own pockets and we build it for the people who want our service and support our organization because we provide the services they need and give them the personal customer support they deserve.

There are several neighborhoods in Rosemount that the “promise” of Fiber to the Home was started, but never finished that are our next focus. These areas include Harmony Village and Bloomfield. The only thing we need to start these areas is a grass roots desire from these neighborhoods. Building new homes is less expensive than building homes with beautiful landscaping, sidewalks and driveways already in place, and to build fiber we need a take rate capable of paying back our investment. There are many studies that state that a fiber connected home is worth more than a home not connected by fiber and the increased home value is equivalent to adding a fireplace to the home or over $5000/home.

Gigabit Minnesota service options include Broadband Internet speeds of up to 1000 Mbps – a Gig service and customers can add IPTV and phone service over the same reliable connection. Gigabit Minnesota currently connects over 1500 homes in Rosemount and plans to add another 1000 homes by completing the Harmony Village and Bloomfield developments. Gigabit Minnesota provides Broadband High Speed Internet Services, digital and high definition television services, digital voice services, and more.
For Gigabit Fiber services call 651-888-4GIG or check out our website at www.gigabitmn.com or email Jim at jim.hickle@gigabitmn.com.

Growing the Cooperative Broadband Movement in Minnesota

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Bernadine JoselynFor more than a decade, Blandin Foundation has worked to improve broadband access and use in rural Minnesota. We believe that broadband is the essential 21st Century infrastructure and is required for everything else in which the Foundation is engaged – community economic vitality, education, leadership and advocacy.

Our entire society, urban and rural, is increasingly dependent on broadband – farmers, students, manufacturers, health care providers, small business owners, and retirees. In other words, everyone. Without broadband, rural areas will be left behind, unable to attract or retain the necessary people and investment to sustain vibrant economic activity.

We are supportive of a wide range of options for getting broadband but we have found that what works in metropolitan areas – or even towns isn’t working in the far corners of the state. Large parts of our Minnesota rural countryside are being left behind with inadequate broadband infrastructure and services but we are noticing that cooperatives are starting to fill the gap.

Telephone cooperatives are delivering world-class broadband services over fiber optics in expanded service areas. Electric co-ops are meeting their members’ needs with new fiber and wireless networks. A new multi-county hybrid fiber/wireless co-op, formed as a public-private partnership, is under construction and will be 100% fiber-based within several years.

Blandin Foundation applauds local ownership, patient capital and a focus on community benefits that will drive and sustain rural broadband investment where traditional businesses have difficulty venturing based on the premise of an ROI that suits shareholders. Cooperatives have the management, financial and physical assets to be successful. Many local governments have found cooperatives to be  their best choice for equitable public-private partnerships.

We welcome you to join this conversation at the November 18-20 conference, Border-to-Border Broadband: Better Together in St. Louis Park. Several sessions will focus on the role of cooperatives in broadband development, and all sessions will address the “Why’s and How’s” of rural broadband development. Register here.

Why should urban residents subsidize rural broadband? Because we like to eat!

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I recently wrote about a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about limited access to broadband in Afton MN. The comments were almost as interesting as the article. One theme that always emerges is – why should urban subsidize rural? Here’s one reason – access to food. (I know Afton is not a world farming center – but other areas in Minnesota are – and the themes are the same regardless of specific location!)

The USDA recently released two smartphone apps that will make farming more efficient. I’ll paste the story below – but one important caveat is that you need a smartphone and wireless or cellular access. And I assume you need a great data plan because I can only imagine how much data will be going up and downstream. I heard a little bit about farmers’ need for broadband in Willmar last week. In Willmar people are defaulting to using hotspots and bringing data back to the office to upload. The age of precision ag is already here – and it will help produce food more efficiently – but to really take advantage we need adequate broadband access in these areas, which by definition are not densely populated to have broadband coverage. It’s just one straightforward reason folks in urban areas might want to subsidize rural broadband access…

This past April, they [Agricultural Research Service (ARS)] released the first two of a suite of mobile phone apps that, once all are issued, will connect agricultural producers around the world and provide them with shared knowledge on ways to maximize their land’s productivity while protecting its resources for future generations. The two apps, dubbed “LandInfo” and “LandCover,” can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and are currently available for use on Android phones only. However, other platforms, including iPhones, may be available by year’s end, noted Herrick, with ARS’s Range Management Research Unit in Las Cruces, New Mexico. …

“The LandPKS is a global network of open-source databases and computer simulation models that anyone with a mobile phone and a wireless or cellular data connection will be able to access,” explained Herrick.
The apps use the latest in digital soil mapping, GPS-enabled camera functions and Cloud-computing technology, but require no special training—thanks to picture-matching, drop-down menus, explanatory video and multiple-choice questions.

With LandInfo, for example, users can collect and share soil and land-cover information as well as gain access to global climate data. The app also provides some useful feedback, including how much water the soil can store for plants to use, average monthly temperature and precipitation, and growing season length.
LandCover simplifies data collecting for use in land-cover inventories and monitoring. In fact, a yard or meter stick with five notches is all that’s needed to document tree, grass, bare-ground and crop-residue cover. The app automatically generates basic indicators of these cover types on the phone and stores the data on servers that are accessible to users worldwide.

A future app (LandPotential) will use the LandInfo data together with Cloud-based models and additional knowledge bases to help users identify and select management systems that increase production while reducing soil erosion.

Herrick said this type of shared knowledge will become especially important as agricultural producers seek to meet the food, fiber, fuel and feed needs of a growing world population projected to reach 9 billion individuals by 2050.

Success story: a competitive local provider meets the need of an unserved rural resident in need

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I have often heard providers say – if people call us with their broadband need, we will do our best to serve them. These providers are usually referring to business customers, but I had to share this story from Consolidated Telecom (CTC). They heard the need and they met it in an usual, but somewhat old-fashioned way!

Bill Coleman (Blandin consultant) was contacted by Patty Branchaud, a member of the town board in Ripley Township. She was frustrated because she was unable to get broadband from her local phone company (CenturyLink) just 4 miles outside of Fort Ripley. She had also done some work contacting other providers to see what they could provide. No immediate solution emerged. Bill helped her reconnect with CTC. Many people in her general area use CTC, both in CTC’s traditional local exchange area and in their growing competitive exchange footprint.

To reward her for her efforts (and to get a new customer), CTC is now providing service to her over a T1 line, a tried and true technology that provides a dedicated 1.5 Mbps connection at a cost of $85 per month. CTC leases the line from CenturyLink to provide the service.

Patty is finding this to be a better solution than satellite Internet with its high latency and data caps. And more good news, CTC has applied for funding from the Office of Broadband Development to expand to Patty’s township.

Through her broadband travails, Patty learned about and is considering an application to be appointed to the State Broadband Task Force. In fact, she has been encouraged by other townships to apply to represent them. “It is extremely important that the people who live in rural MN have just the same sort of access as those who live in town. It’s hard to do Township work without broadband. It is crazy that in town they pay about $20 per month and we are forced to pay $100 per month with limited data. It is important that the word gets out how much rural MN needs broadband Internet. I talk with people each day that can’t get decent Internet or can’t get any wired broadband service at all. Many refuse to or can’t afford the high price of satellite Internet or 4G services with their very limited data plans. People want to move to our area, but can’t because of the lack of Internet service. For a family of 5, capped data would never work.”

3,300 Grand Rapids locations get Gig access

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Good news for Grand Rapids customers of Paul Bunyan…

The GigaZone Comes to Thousands More in Grand Rapids Over 3,300 new Grand Rapids locations now in the GigaZone

(Grand Rapids, MN) (October 26, 2015) –Over three thousand locations in the northern Grand Rapids area have been upgraded and are now in the GigaZone, Paul Bunyan Communications announced today. Just last month over 2,100 locations in the southern Grand Rapids area were included in the GigaZone.

“We continue to make great progress on upgrading our network to incorporate even more member locations into the GigaZone. It’s exciting, particularly for those who are included this year, and we will continue to do as much as we can to bring the GigaZone to all our members and communities we serve as fast as we can.” said Gary Johnson, Paul Bunyan Communications CEO/General Manager.

The GigaZone is currently available to over 13,100 locations including all of the cooperative’s service area of rural Park Rapids, Lake George, Trout Lake Township east of Grand Rapids, most of Grand Rapids, and areas of Bemidji.

Paul Bunyan Communications recently mailed out information to the new locations in the Grand Rapids area that are now in the GigaZone and the cooperative has an online map available showing the active areas of the GigaZone as well as those areas that will be constructed/upgraded during the remainder of 2015.

“Lots of folks are wondering when the GigaZone will reach their location. The online map of the active areas and plans for this year is a great resource for those interested in checking on their specific location.” added Brian Bissonette, Paul Bunyan Communications Marketing Supervisor.

GigaZone service options include unprecedented Broadband Internet speeds of up to 1000 Mbps – a Gigabit. Members who subscribe to GigaZone Broadband can also add PBTV Fusion and/or low cost unlimited local and long distance GigaZone voice service. All current service options also remain available to cooperative members within the GigaZone.

Most current wireless routers cannot support blazing GigaZone Internet speeds. To help, the cooperative is offering GigaZone Integrated Wi-Fi that uses the latest in advanced Wi-Fi technologies to maximize the in-home wireless experience. This service is free to all new GigaZone customers for the first six months, with a minimal charge thereafter.

Paul Bunyan Communications has the region’s largest and fastest all fiber optic network with over 5,000 square miles throughout most of Beltrami County and portions of Cass, Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and St. Louis Counties. The Cooperative provides Broadband High Speed Internet Services including the GigaZone, digital and high definition television services, Smart Home services, digital voice services, and more.

Unserved areas of Minnesota take all forms – some are quite well off

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The Minnesota Star Tribune recently ran an article on the problems some well-heeled outer ring suburbs are having getting better broadband. It’s an interesting spin on what I’ve heard in other communities – most recently in Willmar. Communities are frustrated because the ability of residents to sell homes, start businesses and do homework is in jeopardy and based on the decisions of private businesses. This is what is looks like in Afton…

In broadband as in other domains, including cellphone coverage, places such as Afton that have fought to remain rural, beating back developers who’ve sought to bring in subdivisions with hundreds of homes, are now too sparsely settled for businesses to make a profit.

“When we told a roomful of Comcast representatives that we were about to add a 50-acre subdivision,” Ross recalls, “they asked, ‘How many homes?’ When we said ‘Five,’ they literally burst out laughing. ‘In Woodbury, it’d be 200 and we’d be talking to you,’ they said. ‘But we are not going to build out Afton.’ ”
It’s not just the thinly scattered homes per acre in some wealthy areas; it’s also distance from the road. Negotiations have taken place in the Lake Minnetonka area over how many hundreds of feet from the street the provider will cover, said Jim Lundberg, operations manager for the Lake Minnetonka Communications Commission.

“It used to be 200 feet for us, but we were able to get them to cover 500 feet, and that was a significant change,” he said. “But you have horse farms in Medina where driveways are extremely long and households have to pay the cost themselves when it’s more than 500 feet.”

Apparently there are other drawbacks in these areas – but lack of broadband is more severe than the rest…

Technology isn’t the only problem for many living in pricey, remote areas. Residents of Afton report they can’t always get a pizza delivered, or a windshield repaired. Some drive to Wisconsin for groceries. Residents of extremely low-density communities in eastern Washington County crowded a public hearing on library planning to complain that they don’t have a library anywhere close.
But these days, not getting speedy Internet, especially for folks able to afford big mansions, is like not having indoor plumbing.

It sounds like Afton has applied for a state broadband grant. The article alludes to fund’s priority for economically distressed areas, which is not for Afton’s advantage. I wonder if that will come up when they discuss funding in the Legislature next year…

Indeed, the law speaks of helping places suffering “economic distress.” Last year, communities seeking help included Medina, whose median household income of $127,000 towers over Edina’s, and Orono, on the banks of Lake Minnetonka. Neither was awarded funds.

It is interesting to read the hundreds of comments garnered by the story.

My nearly very expensive digital literacy lesson: Making an iPad, iPhone, iPod less like an open credit card

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Remember those stories of kids racking up thousands of dollars of text fees – or back in the day in AOL hourly rate fees – or really back in the day long distance bills?  The parents get the bills and the jaw drops? Well I had the modern version of that happen this week. Over the last two months, my youngest kid (age 11) has charged more than $1500 on iTunes.

I thought I’d share the quick story and solution both to be helpful but as a reminder that technology is tricky. I think that’s why it can be a hard topic for policymakers – there are intricacies that we all need help understanding – and it’s not that this was a technology issue so much as an issue brought about by technology. That’s often the case.

I like to think of myself of being fairly tech savvy. I have talked to my kids about enhanced stranger danger online and the need to keep private info private but apparently I hadn’t discussed online economics – digital assets cost real money.

I called iTunes. The woman I spoke to was lovely and helpful. They refunded most of the money. They didn’t ask a ton of questions – just enough to figure out that I was me and I was responsible for the Apple account in question because – my daughter has her own Apple ID, which she needed for her iPhone. (He older sister use their Apple IDs for their school iPads too.) And Apple sent me two helpful articles to make sure this doesn’t happen again:

About Restrictions (parental controls) on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Change or remove your Apple ID payment information in the iTunes Store

All’s well that ends well. Apple made a potentnial very painful lesson a lot easier to take. We’re securing our phones financially and the silver lining I have a very repentant 11 year old who is going to help me rake leaves!

Representative Baker and Representative Daudt talk broadband in Willmar: Co-ops, federal funding and permit costs

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Yesterday Representative Baker and Representative Daudt met with folks in Willmar (Haug Kubota) to talk about broadband. What they learned is that people are frustrated with the service they get (or don’t get) now. Like most communities, the connectivity is fine in town and much less fine five miles out. Which means the houses by the lake – the ones many Minnesotans aspire to move to – do not have broadband and therefore folks can’t really move there. Without broadband access, residents can’t start businesses, work remotely, do homework or get access to telehealth options. Many local businesses have apparently paid for FFTP – which lead to a discussion of just how much that costs between the actual work and the permits required. The folks at Haug had been waiting almost a year to get fiber to the John Deere shop directly across Hwy 12. And the cost for the permit was about $10,000 – when all was said and done.

The question is how to change it. People recognize that big money is coming in for broadband from the federal government (CAF 2) to the tune of $80 a year through 2020. Attendees knew that local providers had accepted funds and how much was designated for the areas – but not exactly where or for what speeds. CAF 2 funding supports 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. As attendees pointed out that’s fine for Netflix but difficult for working.

Representative Baker asked an interesting question – if the state had $1 billion to improve broadband how should they spend it? People suggested co-ops because co-ops are not beholden to shareholders who don’t live in the area. They are willing to reinvest in the area. They can take into consideration communitywide savings that result with better broadband (from e-government services, telehealth keeping people in homes to kids doing homework at home – not some parking lot adjacent to public WiFi). Another option might be to find a way to use state funding as a match to CAF 2 funding and use it to entice providers to upgrade beyond 10/1.

As always it’s good to hear people talking about broadband – policymakers recognize the need to invest but broadband is wonky and expensive and they just want to know how best to do it and what people really need.

And what they said was – Minnesota has to do broadband – via fiber, wireless, satellite – whatever it takes! But it’s going to take some money. Rural towns aren’t leaving; they are changing. We want people to move here – but it isn’t viable without broadband.

Read on for full notes and more videos

Continue reading →

Happy Digital Citizenship Week – talk to a kid about being a good netizen

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The TalkThis is Digital Citizenship Week! I thought I’d go off the board a little bit to invite everyone to celebrate Digital Citizen Week by talking to a kid about what it means to be a good and safe citizen online.

Many years ago I was the computer teacher at a small grade school – grades K-8. I can tell you that kids take to technology – but they aren’t born knowing it. They need guidance. I now have my own kids who think they can use technology – and one is the queen of Instagram but when I asked her to get Maps working for me as I drove she had no idea what to do – because using technology isn’t just using technology. It’s using maps, asking good questions and evaluating answers, it’s writing a paragraph with a thesis and supporting sentences, it’s knowing when to be friendly and when to be warned.

With younger kids it can seem easier – because younger kids still have faith that we grownups know what we’re doing and their world is generally more sheltered even online. But it’s the teens who generally have the tools to get in trouble – either in school or on their own phone and devices. They need us to help them understand the potential dangers – from basic stranger danger to tarnishing their own reputation online. I have gone into high schools to talk about exactly that – brand management for teens because teens are their own brands! I talk to them as I would a client – we look up their names online and start from there. In each class I see at least one pair of worried eyes when I say that it’s pretty easy to screen-capture a Snapchat picture. Kids need guidance.

Common Media has produce a flier with some advice on talking to kids about technology – thought I’d share their tips here.

Here are the 5 basics to cover during The Talk:

Be kind. Try to instill a sense of empathy in your kids. Remember: there’s someone else on the other side of the screen.
Younger kids: Treat others like you want to be treated ¬ and always follow a website’s rules for behavior. Ask: How do you see other kids behaving online? What are some nice things you’ve seen other kids do?
Older kids: Post constructive comments, and avoid getting into flame wars with trolls. Ask: What kind of positive behavior do you see online?
Keep private things private. Talk about what’s OK for kids to share online and what’s not.
Younger kids: Get kids to think about safety without scaring them. Don’t share your name, address, school, age, etc. Ask: Why don’t we want strangers to know certain things about us or our family?
Older kids: Don’t broadcast your location, send photos to strangers, or share passwords with friends. Ask: What kind of information can be unsafe to share, and what’s fair game?
Don’t believe everything you see. Just because it’s online doesn’t make it true. Not everybody is who they say they are.
Younger kids: Teach kids to be detectives. Ask: How can you tell whether something is true online? What are some signs that something might not be true?
Older kids: Use reputable sources. Learn to recognize red flags. Ask: How can you tell what’s a reliable source of information? What are some signs something’s a scam?
Don’t overshare. Think before you post. Use privacy settings.
Younger kids: Help kids understand what sharing something online means. Ask: Who can see what you’re doing or saying online?
Older kids: Encourage kids to pause before they act. Ask: What are some questions you can ask yourself before you share something online? Have you ever regretted something you’ve posted or said online?
Stand up for others. If someone’s getting bullied or picked on, speak up, report it, or reach out.
Younger kids: Make sure kids know they can come to you for help. Teach them how to flag misbehavior. Ask: What would you do if you saw someone being mean online or in a game?
Older kids: Give kids tools to use in a crisis. Ask: If someone was being mean to you online, what would you want your friends to do? Do you know how to flag or report bullying on a social network or in a multiplayer game?

400+ Locations in Rural Park Rapids Gain Access to Broadband

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I’m pleased to share the news from Paul Buyan Communicationsgigazone…

Long Wait Over: 400+ Locations in Rural Park Rapids Gain Access to Broadband

(Bemidji, MN) (October 20, 2015) – The long wait for access to high speed Internet and cable television services has finally come to an end for hundreds of locations in rural Park Rapids.  Paul Bunyan Communications announced today that expansion of its all-fiber optic network is complete in two more regions of rural Park Rapids bringing access to broadband and cable TV services to over 400 more locations.  One region is north and west of Two Inlets which includes the Boot Lake area.  The other region is to the east of the City of Park Rapids and includes an area from the east side of Long Lake to Big Stony Lake.

Further network expansion construction continues and services are expected to become available over the winter to even more locations currently without broadband in an area east of Park Rapids that includes the following lakes: Sunday, Little Stony, 4th Crow Wing, Island, 3rd Crow Wing, 2nd Crow Wing, Palmer, and most of 1st Crow Wing.

The cooperative started expansion of its all fiber optic network into rural Park Rapids in 2012 and Paul Bunyan Communications now offers all of its services to over 3,100 locations in the region which includes Gigabit Broadband Internet, Paul Bunyan Television, and voice services.

“Access to broadband Internet services enhances life in so many different ways.  It opens up e-commerce opportunities, educational, cultural, and recreational resources.  It is especially important in rural areas where it can help overcome distance and financial barriers,” said Gary Johnson, CEO/GM of Paul Bunyan Communications, “We’ve seen the difference it can make first hand throughout our service territory and we are proud to bring Broadband access to hundreds more in the Park Rapids area.”

“Ironically these new areas of our cooperative have gone from having no Broadband access to having access to the fastest Internet speeds available today as part of the GigaZone. There are very few parts of the country like the Park Rapids area where Gigabit Internet services are available.  It’s pretty amazing that areas like Boot Lake and Long Lake have Gigabit Internet access before New York City or Washington D.C.,” added Brian Bissonette, Paul Bunyan Communications Marketing Supervisor.

GigaZone service options include unprecedented Broadband Internet speeds of up to 1000 Mbps – a Gigabit.  Members who subscribe to GigaZone Broadband can also add PBTV Fusion and/or low cost unlimited local and long distance GigaZone voice service.  All non-GigaZone service options remain available to cooperative members as well.

Most current wireless routers cannot support blazing GigaZone Internet speeds.  To help, the cooperative is offering GigaZone Integrated Wi-Fi that uses the latest in advanced Wi-Fi technologies to maximize the in-home wireless experience. This service is free to all new GigaZone customers for the first six months, with a minimal charge thereafter.

Paul Bunyan Communications has the region’s largest and fastest all fiber optic network with over 5,000 square miles throughout most of Beltrami County and portions of Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and St. Louis Counties.  The Cooperative provides Broadband High Speed Internet Services, digital and high definition television services, Smart Home services, digital voice services, and more.

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Looking for broadband funding? Here’s a good list of federal options

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federal BB fundingNTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) recently released a report that details lots of federal funding options for broadband expansion, including infrastructure deployment, adoption and digital literacy, public computer access, planning, research and other projects. Here’s how they describe it…

As part of this new initiative, we are pleased to release our Guide to Federal Broadband Funding, a comprehensive manual of federal broadband funding opportunities and information about state and local funding sources for broadband. The guide details a wide range of opportunities. While guide is not meant to provide an exhaustive list of all federal funding opportunities, it can serve as a starting point for communities to explore potential federal financing options.

It is a clean and easy to use directory of financing options – as they note it’s not exhaustive, but it’s pretty good and the report includes a few ideas on where to go for more funding opportunities.