Monthly Archives: May 2018

Supplemental budget (including broadband grants) passes – but threatened with Gubernatorial veto

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports…

Minnesota lawmakers adjourned late Sunday after finalizing a handful of tax and spending measures, but with little chance they’d have much to show for three months of work as Gov. Mark Dayton vowed to veto most of their major efforts.

The Session Daily provides more details…

Early Sunday morning, the House passed a massive omnibus supplemental spending package. Then, around 4 p.m. Sunday, the House, in a second attempt within a week, passed a tax conformity bill that included special education funding requested by Gov. Mark Dayton. With minutes remaining before the constitutional deadline, the House passed a $1.4 billion capital investment bill and sent it to the governor.

“We’re excited, obviously,” House Speaker Kurt Daudt (R-Crown) told the media after adjourning the 2018 session sine die. “A very successful session, passing all the big bills we had promised and delivered for Minnesotans in all the ways we said we would.”

Dayton told the media he would veto the tax and supplemental budget bills.

“It’s been a debacle,” Dayton said a few hours earlier. “But it’s been a debacle of their creation.”

And Minnesota Public Radio reports…

The bills passed on the session’s final days include:

  • a measure to cut taxes and free up more classroom money for schools

  • a construction package that could lead to $1.5 billion in projects

  • a massive budget bill that would increase state contributions to broadband expansions, provide schools money to secure campuses, take steps to attack the opioid epidemic and more.

All are shared goals of the governor and the Legislature, but most of the bills come with provisions that Dayton sees as objectionable or fail to adequately address the problems facing the state. The main spending bill spans 990 pages and would parcel out more than $130 million of a projected budget surplus.

The tax bill authorizes $225 million in spending for schools meant to avert layoffs and program cuts in some districts, but Dayton called it “fake,” because only $50 million of it was new money, and the rest comes from existing allocations schools are allowed to use in new ways.

So it’s a matter of seeing what happens at this point.

Capitol Update from MN Library Association – still $15 million for broadband

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It’s hard to see what’s happening at the Capitol these days things are flying around so fast, but here’s a legislative update from the MN Library Association – they mention the $15 million for broadband…

The Supplemental budget bill is the arena for several issues of interest to MLA-ITEM. Regional Library Telecommunications Aid (RLTA) has been a source of debate this session as the MDE proposed re-purposing potential unspent RLTA funds for school telecom needs. House Education Finance Chair Jennifer Loon sought to keep these funds within the sphere of the regional public library world and her position, which we asked for, has prevailed at this point in time. The Supplemental conference report includes language allowing the regional library systems to spend RLTA funds on other broadband access related initiatives that don’t necessarily align with the federal e-rate program.

The Supplemental budget bill also contains $15 million for the broadband development fund.

Cooperative role in providing broadband – what, who, how, where and why?

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The University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives has published an in depth report on what’s happening with broadband and cooperatives – especially in Wisconsin – but they use one Minnesota example (Arrowhead Electric Cooperative) and regardless of location, the driving factors leading to the need and opportunity for a coop to provide broadband is similar.

The report provides a number of examples of what cooperatives have done. In the end, they determine there’s no one-size-fits-all solution but I think the range of solutions included are helpful to anyone in a cooperative looking at their options or anyone looking to persuade a cooperative to look into providing services in their area.

I’m just going to outline some of their high level observations.

Why would a cooperative get involved in broadband?

There is a perceived connection between potential for future community and economic development and access to broadband. A National Agricultural and Rural Development and Policy Center publication concluded that rural median household income grew at nearly twice the rate where broadband technology was adopted in households compared to where it was not adopted. 1

Unmet infrastructure need in rural communities is the major reason both telecommunications and electric cooperatives were organized in the early part of the 20th century. The business model which drove investor-owned firms did not support the capital intensive investment required to develop infrastructure in sparsely populated rural areas. Cooperatives were developed to meet the demand for reliable utility services that, both then and now, are critical to modernization, innovation, and future economic development in rural areas.

How can it make financial sense?

According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 42 percent of the nation’s electric distribution lines are owned by electric cooperatives. These lines cover 75% of the U.S. land mass to reach just over 12 percent of the nation’s meters, an average of 7.4 customers per line mile. This is much lower than investor-owned utilities, which average 34 customers per line. Public owned utilities, or municipals, average 48 consumers per line mile.20 Because electric cooperatives are organized and operated to provide service to member-customers rather than a return to investors, they have been able to develop and maintain the infrastructure to serve rural, sparsely populated rural areas.

How does it serve the mission of an electric cooperative to provide broadband?

Electric cooperatives’ primary mission is to deliver electric service to member-owners in a financially responsible manner. Boards setting the strategic direction for the cooperative have the fiduciary responsibility to assure that mission can be met into the future. However, as the necessity of broadband access grows, the lack of high speed internet is increasingly a problem for members.

In addition, technological changes that are affecting the architecture of the electric grid increasingly are making questions about broadband access more directly relevant to the electric cooperative’s own future operations. By upgrading the communications technology that is part of the cooperative’s electric infrastructure, a “smart grid” will allow cooperatives and their members to better manage energy demand and distributed energy functions that allow customers to contribute to the grid.24

Other values may also drive a cooperative board to explore providing broadband access. Many cooperatives are guided by seven cooperative principles, one of which embraces a concern for the community. In the case of electric cooperatives, management or boards often participate on local economic development boards and committees. The cooperative’s electric infrastructure is critical to community economic activity, which in turn maintains the cooperative business and supports future growth. The overlap between the electric cooperative membership and the community aligns the service goals to members with a service orientation to community.

They have a nice graphic on the spectrum of opportunities that cooperatives have to get involved with broadband in the community…

Steps to create change that might help drive the move to provide broadband…

Kotter’s eight stages for strategic change are:

1. Create a sense of urgency

2. Build the guiding coalition

3. Form a strategic vision and initiatives

4. Enlist a volunteer army

5. Enable action by removing barriers

6. Generate (and celebrate) short term wins

7. Sustain acceleration 8. Institute change

Senate votes to overturn Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal

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The Benton Foundation reports…

The US Senate voted to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules, with all Democrats and three Republicans voting in favor of net neutrality. The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would simply undo the FCC’s December 2017 vote to deregulate the broadband industry. If the CRA is approved by the House and signed by President Trump, Internet service providers would have to continue following rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has scheduled his repeal to take effect on June 11. If Congress doesn’t act, the net neutrality rules and the FCC’s classification of ISPs as common carriers would be eliminated on that date. Democrats face much longer odds in the House, where Republicans hold a 236-193 majority. Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate, but Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine); Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA); and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) broke ranks in order to support net neutrality and common carrier regulation of broadband providers.

Bill prohibiting blocking or altering caller ID (HF4518) is introduced in MN House

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According to the House Introduction of Bills…

The bill was read for the first time and referred to the Committee on Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance.

Sandstede; O’Driscoll; Nelson; Layman; Murphy, M.; Schultz; Sundin; Kunesh-Podein; Slocum; Murphy, E.; Mahoney; Metsa; Mariani; Freiberg; Carlson, L.; Bernardy; Maye Quade; Liebling; Hilstrom; Fischer; Rosenthal; Halverson; Wagenius; Olson; Jessup; Ward; Bennett; Albright and Grossell introduced:

  1. F. 4518,A bill for an act relating to telecommunications; prohibiting blocking or altering caller ID in making a commercial telephone solicitation; amending Minnesota Statutes 2016, section 325E.30.

The bill was read for the first time and referred to the Committee on Commerce and Regulatory Reform.

Here is the text of the bill…

A bill for an act
relating to telecommunications; prohibiting blocking or altering caller ID in making
a commercial telephone solicitation; amending Minnesota Statutes 2016, section
325E.30.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1.

Minnesota Statutes 2016, section 325E.30, is amended to read:

325E.30 TIME OF DAY LIMITOTHER PROHIBITIONS.

(a) A caller shall not use an automatic dialing-announcing device nor make any
commercial telephone solicitation before 9:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m.

(b) A caller may not block or use an altered caller ID in making a commercial telephone
solicitation.

Minnesota’s telehealth policies are noted in State Telehealth Laws report

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MHealth Intelligence reports…

In its spring 2018 update of the State Telehealth Laws and Reimbursement Policies Report, the Center for Connected Health Policy reports that 10 states have amended their telehealth policies since August 2016 to specifically make the patient’s home an originating site for Medicaid-accepted telehealth and telemedicine programs. Those states are Delaware, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

Meanwhile, the report notes that six states have limited the geographic requirement altogether since 2013. And 16 states have added schools to the list of approved originating sites, though some are placing restrictions on those services.

According the CCHP’s sixth annual report, some 160 telehealth-related bills have been introduced during the 2018 legislative session in 44 states, continuing a digital health trend that saw more than 200 pieces of legislation introduced during the 2017 session. But not all of those bills are supportive of new healthcare services.

Minnesota also gets a nod for telehealth licensure…

In terms of telehealth licensure, the report finds that nine states – Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas – issue specific licenses to use telehealth, while 22 states have joined the Federation of State Medical Boards’ Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which offers an expedited process to applying for licenses to practice in member states. Three states, Tennessee, Montana and Nevada, dropped individual license requirements to join the compact (though Tennessee’s Osteopathic Board is still issuing telehealth licenses).

Senator Smith is working on Broadband in the Farm Bill

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KSFY reports on Senator Tina Smith and her take on the Farm Bill…

But Smith then says there is a third component she is trying to work into the farm bill. “Our farm bill needs to include strong rural development programs like, for example, what I’m proposing to help expand rural broadband.”

That broadband component is becoming more and more of an issue for rural areas.
Iowa’s lieutenant governor Adam Gregg is working on a similar bill specific to that state.
For rural families, broadband access comes down to a practical quality of life issue; the ability to download music, movies and the ability for farmers to quickly and easily connect to the internet for everything from market quotes to supply purchases.
But having easy access to broadband in rural areas also makes those areas more likely to land new businesses and new residents. Without out it can seem like the technological dark ages. “My broadband proposal I hope will be in this legislation.”

US Senate Commerce Committee approves bill to aid rural broadband deployment

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The High Plains Midwest Ag Journal reports…

The Senate Commerce Committee April 25 approved the “Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act of 2018,” as sponsored by Senators Roger Wicker, R-MS, and Amy Klobuchar, D-MN.

The bill would direct the Federal Communications Commission to establish a task force to identify gaps in broadband connectivity for the nation’s cropland and ranchland. The measure also instructs the agency to develop ways to help encourage broadband adoption and precision agriculture in areas where it is currently unavailable.

Senator Klobuchar had this to say…

Klobuchar said, “We still have work to do to close the digital divide between rural and urban communities. In a 21st century economy that demands efficiency, farmers and ranchers are too often unable to take advantage of new technologies due to limited broadband access. This bipartisan legislation will promote broadband deployment and precision agriculture technology to help Minnesota farmers streamline their operations, improve crop yields and boost their bottom line.”

Here are more details:

Specifically, the legislation outlines these tasks for the new FCC task force:

Identify and measure current gaps in broadband coverage on cropland and ranchland;

Develop policy recommendations, in consultation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to promote the rapid, expanded deployment of fixed and mobile broadband on cropland and ranchland, with the goal of achieving service on 95 percent of croplands and ranchlands in the U.S. by 2025;

Recommend specific steps the FCC should consider to ensure that available farm data from the USDA is reflected in the development of future FCC programs dedicated to the deployment of broadband infrastructure to croplands and ranchlands; and

Develop a public report detailing the status of fixed and mobile broadband coverage on croplands and ranchlands; the projected future connectivity needs of agricultural operations, farmers, and ranchers; and the steps being taken to accurately measure the availability of broadband on croplands and ranchlands and the limitations of current measurement processes.

Broadband service spreading in rural Murray, Pipestone counties

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The Globe reports on a process that Nobles, Murray and Pipestone Counties have used to move to better broadband in their areas…

The widespread utility of broadband has led several southwest Minnesota counties to invest their time and money into researching the topic, and make serious progress in the process.

In 2016, Nobles County conducted a broadband feasibility study with CCG and Slayton-based Finley Engineering. Shortly after, the state’s Border-to-Border grant program awarded Lismore Cooperative Telephone nearly $3 million to create a hybrid fiber and wireless network that will provide baseline broadband speeds to most of the county and ultra-fast fiber to hundreds of homes. The project is expected to be completed by mid-2018.

Last year, Murray County and Pipestone County partnered with four other southwest Minnesota counties and the Blandin Foundation to conduct feasibility studies — also done by Finley and CCG — in hopes of getting a similar outcome.

Pipestone County’s study was completed in February 2017, and later that year, Ruthton-based Woodstock Telephone received a $363,851 grant from the Minnesota Border-to-Border Broadband to provide fixed wireless broadband to rural Pipestone County.

Murray County is still working on access…

“The county does not plan to build a broadband network but is open to talking with providers who are interested in extending service to our citizens and may need financial assistance to do so,” Rucker said. “Murray County had the feasibility study completed so that any provider who wants to extend broadband service to our unserved and underserved areas could use the study as background to apply for state or federal grants to do so.”

The county has seen significant broadband investment from Woodstock since 2015, when it installed two wireless broadband towers around Lake Shetek. It continued over the last two years, installing eight internet coverage sites in the area, including towers in Lake Wilson, Slayton and Edgerton. The company plans to add another tower south of Chandler this year.

The towers, which are fed with fiber, provide 50Mbps download speeds at a range of six miles, according to Terry Nelson, Woodstock general manager. The speeds and service can vary, however, as wireless internet can be disrupted by geographical features such as hills, trees and windmills.

“We’ve done wireless in a lot of these areas, but there’s still little pockets that we can’t hit with some of our wireless,” Nelson said. “I would definitely never say the county is 100 percent covered, because it’s not.”

An October 2017 report from the state found 99.8 percent of Murray County households have access to 25/3 broadband — up from 50.47 percent in July 2016 — and more than 52.9 percent can access 100/20 — up from 41.56 percent. The numbers in Pipestone County are 97.87 and 79.73 percent — up from 79.36 and 44.54 percent, respectively — but Dawson said the numbers shouldn’t be relied on.

Counties recognize wireless as a means to meeting 2022 state goals, but at looking for fiber to reach 2026 goals…

Minnesota wants 25/3 speeds mandated statewide by 2022. By 2026, the required numbers will be raised to 100/20. Reaching those speeds consistently is nearly impossible with wireless internet, Dawson said.

“The wireless that we’re talking about is capable of that within a mile or so, but you would have to put a cell site at every farm — that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Instead, broadband experts agree the ultimate solution is delivering fiber-to-the-home, reliably delivering 1-gigabit (1000Mbps) speeds.

Lismore Telephone is installing fiber to every household in Leota and Wilmont and hundreds of homes along its 135-mile fiber ring, but it is expensive. In addition to $6 million between the state and Nobles County, the county had to throw in an addition $1 million in cash and $2.57 million in taxable general obligation tax abatement bonds to make it work.

That’s with fiber costing around $20,000 per mile, and the price won’t be coming down any time soon, Dawson said.

“You are already in a state where fiber is as cheap as it will possibly be,” Dawson said. “With 50-foot deep soil, they can get it in real easy. Minnesota can bury fiber for $20,000 a mile, where in a lot of parts of the country, that’s $50,000 a mile.”

For Woodstock, a successful fiber formula has been delivering directly to large businesses, where the return on investment makes it doable.

Saint Paul Public Library Extends to Giant Wash Coin Laundry

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I love this idea – I stopped by the laundromat earlier today to check it out. There room was full and the vibe was great. Here’s the info from a press release from the St Paul Library…

Mayor Melvin Carter III will launch the new “Wash and Learn” program at Giant Wash (1675 Rice Street, 55117) on May 12, 2018, at 11 a.m. Giant Wash Laundry will host a Free Laundry Day in celebration, and offer free wash and dry to community members who register between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. All attendees will have opportunities to participate in librarian-lead learning workshops and take home free books and educational resources.

“Wash & Learn is an example of the forward-thinking ideas and partnerships we intend to advance throughout Saint Paul,” says Mayor Carter. “Meeting people where they are with Library programs, materials, and resources makes perfect sense. It is through these unique partnerships and simple solutions that we build a city that works for all of us.”

SPPL partnered with Minnesota State Library Services and Libraries Without Borders (LWB), a national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., to launch Wash & Learn at Giant Wash. The program aims to extend SPPL’s efforts to close the digital divide among residents of Saint Paul. LWB will install laptops and WiFi hotspots at the laundromat, alongside bookshelves with materials customers can read on site or check out and take home.

When I was there, they thought they might clean up to 20,000 pounds of laundry. It looked like the kids had just picked up on the computer and were pretty intent. And two kids had just won bikes. The plan moving forward is to have librarians in the laundromat a couple hours each Saturday until October. It’s a great opportunity to do some one-on-one digital and information literacy lessons. A great model for other communities. In fact turns out Stillwater will try something on Monday and Anoka County is looking at a similar program.

Details on new wifi connection in and around Rochester MN

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Here are details on a new network around Rochester, Minnesota from a press release from Calix, a vendor serving equipment used in the network…

Calix, Inc. (NYSE:CALX) today announced Minnesota WiFi, a wireless Internet service provider (WISP) based in southern Minnesota, is leveraging Calix Cloud and Mesh-Enhanced Carrier Class Wi-Fisolutions to bring its managed Wi-Fi service to residential and business subscribers across six counties. Through the superior performance of the Calix GigaCenters, Minnesota WiFi has dramatically improved the broadband speeds and cloud-based services for its subscribers, allowing local businesses to thrive and residents to maintain their rural, teleworking lifestyle. With Calix Cloud in place, Minnesota WiFi has also been able to improve its support for these subscribers as the remote troubleshooting capabilities have resulted in faster call time resolution and fewer costly truck rolls.

“In the 13 communities Minnesota WiFi serves in and around Rochester, our broadband service enables our subscribers to enjoy the comforts of rural living while being able to take advantage of the same level of service they would find in a big city,” said Darin Steffl, owner of Minnesota WiFi. “Many of our subscribers rely on Wi-Fi for high-bandwidth applications like VPN connections to the Mayo Clinic to work remotely or for transferring huge satellite images of farmland for agricultural tile drainage. We found phenomenal performance and coverage from the Calix GigaCenters, especially in the 5Ghz band. The GigaCenters blew away all other dual-band Wi-Fi routers, which helps our business subscribers succeed and supports our residential subscribers who are streaming media and gaming more than ever before. We are thrilled that through our investment of these next generation technologies from Calix we can meet our goals of both enabling our communities to succeed while finding new ways to streamline our operations.”

MN Broadband Task Force May 2018 meeting notes: Updates, Cyber Security, Education Superhighway and Blockchain

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Today the Broadband Task Force got updates from the Office of Broadband Development and on the legislative activity. They discussed plans for the final report. They also heard from experts on cyber security at the State, the Education Superhighways (nice update on e-rate and impact on Minnesota Schools) and a presentation on bitcoin and blockchain.

Full notes: Continue reading →

Regulators Urged To Examine T-Mobile-Sprint’s Impact On Broadband

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Digital News Daily reports…

Senate Democrats are urging regulators to scrutinize whether T-Mobile’s proposed $26 billion acquisition of Sprint will harm consumers, including ones who primarily connect to the internet through their phones.

“We urge you to closely review this transaction to ensure that it does not threaten to harm consumers or competition in the wireless market,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and others write in a letter to the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission.

The lawmakers’ letter comes one week after T-Mobile and Sprint said they had agreed to merge, leaving the country with three major wireless carriers. Klobuchar and the other lawmakers — Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) — say the deal raises concerns.

CenturyLink and Residential Broadband by Doug Dawson

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Thanks to Doug Dawson of CCG Consulting for permission to re-post his article on CenturyLink…

CenturyLink is in the midst of a corporate reorganization that is going to result is a major shift in the focus of the company. The company merged with Level 3 in 2016 and the management team from Level 3 will soon be in charge of the combined business. Long-time CEO Glen Post is being pushed out of day-to-day management of the company and Jeff Storey, the former CEO of Level 3 will become the new CEO of CenturyLink. Storey was originally slated to take the top spot in 2019, but the transition has been accelerated and will happen this month.

It’s a shift that makes good financial sense for the company. Mr. Storey had huge success at Level 3 and dramatically boosted earnings and stock prices over the last four years. Mr. Storey and CenturyLink CFO Sunit Patel have both made it clear that they are going to focus on the more profitable enterprise business opportunities and that they will judge any investments in last-mile broadband in terms of the expected returns. This differs drastically from Mr. Post who comes from a background as an independent telephone company owner. As recently as a year ago Mr. Post publicly pledged to make the capital investments needed to improve CenturyLink’s last-mile broadband networks.

This is going to mean a drastic shift in the way that CenturyLink views residential broadband. The company lost 283,000 broadband customers for the year ending in December 2017, dropping them to 5.7 million broadband customers. The company blames the losses on the continued success of the cable companies to woo away DSL customers.

This size of the customer losses is a bit surprising. CenturyLink said at the end of 2017 that they were roughly 60% through their CAF II upgrades which is bringing better broadband to over 1.1 million rural households. Additionally, the company built FTTP past 900,000 potential business and residential customers in 2017. If the company was having even a modest amount of success with those two new ventures it’s hard to understand how they lost so many broadband customers.

What might all of this mean for CenturyLink broadband customers? For rural customers it means that any upgrades that are being made using CAF II funding are likely the last upgrades they will ever see. Customers in these rural areas are already used to being neglected and their copper networks are in lousy condition due to decades of neglect by former owner Qwest.

CenturyLink is required by the CAF II program to upgrade broadband speeds in the rural areas to at least 10/1 Mbps. The company says that over half of the upgraded customers are seeing speeds of at least twice that. I’ve always had a concern about any of the big telcos reaching the whole CAF II footprint, and I suspect that when the CAF II money is gone, anybody that was not upgraded as promised will never see upgrades. I’ve also always felt that the CAF II money was a waste of money –  if CenturyLink walks away from the cost of maintaining these newly upgraded DSL networks they will quickly slide back into poor condition.

There are already speculation on Wall Street that CenturyLink might try to find a buyer for their rural networks. After looking at the problems experienced by Frontier and Fairpoint after buying rural telco copper networks one has to wonder if there is a buyer for these properties. But in today’s world of big-deal corporate finance it’s not impossible to imagine some group of investors willing to tackle this. The company could also take a shot at rural exchanges to independent telcos – something US West did over twenty years ago.

It’s also likely that the company’s foray into building widespread FTTP in urban areas is done. This effort is capital intensive and only earns infrastructure returns that are not going to be attractive to the new management. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see the company sell off these new FTTP assets to raise cash.

The company will continue to build fiber, but with the emphasis on enterprise opportunities. They are likely to adopt a philosophy similar to AT&T’s which has been building residential fiber only to large apartment complexes and to households that are within short distances from existing fiber pops. This might bring fiber broadband to a lucky few, but mostly the new management team has made it clear they are deemphasizing residential broadband.

This management transition probably closes the book on CenturyLink as a last-mile ISP. If they are unable to find a buyer for these properties it might take a decade or more for their broadband business to quietly die. This is bad news for existing broadband customers because the company is unlikely to invest in keeping the networks in operational shape. They only ones who might perceive this as good news are those who have been thinking about overbuilding the company – they are not going to see any resistance.

 

West Central promotes MN border to border state grants at the Capitol

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The Wadena Pioneer Journal reports…

West Central Telephone’s President Bruce Kinnunen and General Manager/CEO Chad Bullock recently participated in legislative visits in St. Paul with the Minnesota Telecom Alliance for their annual Day on the Hill event. Kinnunen and Bullock visited with Senator Paul Utke, District 2, Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen, District 8 and Representative John Poston, District 9A while at the state capital.

There were 50 participants at Day on the Hill representing 25 telecoms including West Central Telephone. The Minnesota Telecom Alliance and the Minnesota Cable Communications Association held a Legislative Reception that was well attended. Attendees included 30 House members and 11 Senators.

The focus of this year’s Day on the Hill meeting was on the Border to Border Broadband grant program, and its successful efforts to continue broadband mapping and assisting with other state agencies to help reduce the time it takes to deploy broadband.