I was in Mountain Iron today for a meeting with RAMS (Range Association of Municipalities and Schools), North East Service Cooperative, IRRR and anyone interested in talking about how to get better broadband to their community. At the end of the meeting, we learned that one goal was to get one community to move forward to get better broadband. I think it was a successful meeting.

Fewer than a dozen of us sat at a table. No agenda. And just started talking about what we knew. Much of the conversation was very specific to the area so I won’t go into those details. But a few things happened that I thought would be interested in any Minnesota region. First – it was time well spent. There were four-ish communities represented and I think all of them have a deeper drive and idea of what to do next; one is definitely ready to move forward. Second – the question on everyone’s mind is whether there is an opportunity to use the BEAD challenge process to get more money into Minnesota. There are discrepancies between the FCC maps, the Minnesota maps and local surveys with speed tests. It’s frustrating to folks. Finally, there was a provider in the room who was very generous about asking practical questions to the communities that taught us a lot about how a provider qualifies a potential community partner. I thought I’d try to relay the questions I caught with some explanation when is makes sense.

• How many locations do you want to include? And are any seasonal residents?
  Seasonal residents are often not compelling, although remote monitoring and other year round use of broadband can change that.
• Do you need to serve the whole community?
  It may make sense to h relationship serving only a portion of your community with a project that may be easier or more profitable. You may need to skip the onesie-twosie neighborhoods a mile down the road because that math doesn’t work well – for the first project. Once you have a relationship, it’s easier to make a case for the more difficult neighborhoods.
• Can you serve locations outside of your jurisdiction? Got an area near you that might draw a provider, like a manufactured home park?
  Consider including customers who aren’t in your township or county if it means more potential customers to provider. The provider doesn’t think in political boundaries and it might make the different in making the project attractive.
• Is there any existing infrastructure? Think of anchor tenants too. Maybe the courthouse has access or the school.
  The owners of the existing technology may make good partners or they may be the most likely provider moving forward.
• How many miles of streets do you have? Are they all paved? Is there a ditch that might hold conduit?
• Do you railroad tracks, bogs, lakes, granite ground, historically significant lands?
  Each of these can be a trigger for an increase in expense because of permitting or simply being ground that’s hard to dig.
• Is there any scheduled construction in the foreseeable future? Or any new housing development or industrial parks?
• How much can your community (township, city and/or county) invest in the project?
  A number of 2 percent was mentioned as a target.
• Have you surveyed folks on their need and interest in better broadband.

I may try to develop this list more and update with a new post.

A few bonus nuggets maybe related to policy suggestions:

Providers who accepted RDOF money need only reach 95 percent of the locations in the area. This means 5 percent will likely not be served and those locations will be the highest cost, hardest to reach. Not including those locations in the original bid, made the bid more attractive but it will leave some locations unserved.

Low population density grants in Minnesota offer 75 percent of funding but that is not enough to make a project palatable in some areas where the population or population density are too low or potential costs to deploy and maintain are too high. There are trigger issues (permits, crowded rights of way, difficult terrain) that might cause an unexpected high increase in price. It is difficult to plan for such triggers. Maybe we need an option for greater funding or an option for trigger funding.