Walker’s Pilot Independent has started a series of monthly articles from the Cass County DFL Party. This month they are looking at broadband. It’s sort of a 101 lesson of the policy or business of broadband…
Created by the state legislature, the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development (OBD) began operations in 2014 to work toward the goal of border-to-border high-speed internet access by 2026. The OBD has administered $296 million in broadband grants thus far, helping to connect 103,000 businesses. The OBD predicts that the additional public investment from 2022 to 2026 needed to reach the goal is $1.38 billion at a 75 percent grant funding level. This is over and above state and federal funding to date including the recent $652 million award.
While this is still a significant amount needed to reach the goal, there’s little doubt that the federal infrastructure funding, coupled with the $100 million appropriated by the 2023 DFL-led state legislature for broadband, will make a tremendous impact on achieving our border-to-border access goal. It is anticipated that the $1.38 billion will come from a second federal infrastructure appropriation expected next year, biennial state budget appropriations, and state reserves.
Why subsidize broadband expansion? In a word — money. It’s too expensive for broadband developers to lay fiber optic cable in difficult terrain and more sparsely populated areas. Broadband is not unlike the development of other types of basic infrastructure over our country’s rich history in the need for public investment. Our intercontinental rail system, interstate highway system, electric grid, and our wired telephone system, all needed public investment to ensure these systems served all Americans. Then and now, public investment bridges the gaps through public-private partnerships when market incentives are not sufficient to meet real needs.
While this is still a significant amount needed to reach the goal, there’s little doubt that the federal infrastructure funding, coupled with the $100 million appropriated by the 2023 DFL-led state legislature for broadband, will make a tremendous impact on achieving our border-to-border access goal. It is anticipated that the $1.38 billion will come from a second federal infrastructure appropriation expected next year, biennial state budget appropriations, and state reserves.
Why subsidize broadband expansion? In a word — money. It’s too expensive for broadband developers to lay fiber optic cable in difficult terrain and more sparsely populated areas. Broadband is not unlike the development of other types of basic infrastructure over our country’s rich history in the need for public investment. Our intercontinental rail system, interstate highway system, electric grid, and our wired telephone system, all needed public investment to ensure these systems served all Americans. Then and now, public investment bridges the gaps through public-private partnerships when market incentives are not sufficient to meet real needs.
The system also requires the installation of some ground equipment. The commitment to broadband via fiber optic cable is seen as a nearly no-fail technology with very low ongoing maintenance costs to fill an increasingly urgent need sooner than later, that some would say we needed “yesterday.”