Author Archives: Bill Coleman

A report from the Broadband Communities Summit/Rural Telecommunications Congress

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Bill_ColemanI was honored to present the final keynote presentation at the Broadband Communities Summit in Austin TX last week.  My session was part of the Rural Telecommunications Congress track.  My presentation highlighted some of the great community and organizational projects developed with the support of the Blandin Foundation.  Using the Intelligent Community elements as the framework, I highlighted about 20 projects out of the more than 200 projects funded over the past several years.  As the final presentation at the end of a long conference I was a bit nervous about speaking to an empty room.  I promised those who stayed a unique bonus at the end of my presentation! 

For the last several years, the Rural Telecommunications Congress has co-located their annual event with the Summit.

The following are some fun facts and points of view that I thought were interesting.

Michael Render is a researcher who tracks the impact of fiber connectivity on real estate values and telecom provider revenues.  He noted the following statistics:

  • The average revenue per customer (ARPU) for broadband providers is $150 for those connected by fiber; copper-based customers pay less than $100 monthly with fewer and less premium services available.
  • Home buyers were willing to pay $5,337 more for a house connected by fiber; for those whose existing house is connected by fiber, they are willing to pay even more ($6,500) to ensure that their next home is fiber connected.
  • Apartment renters are willing to pay $150 per month more for fiber connectivity.
  • Rural Counties with broadband have higher average incomes
  • 85% of relocating businesses say that fiber is very imp or important in their location search.  Connectivity ranked fifth in importance of many factors.  Workforce occupied several of the higher-ranking factors (skills, availability, price).
  • 11% of FTTH residents have home businesses; they say that FTTH enables $10,000 more in annual income
  • There are 65 new jobs created per 1,000 passing FTTH
  • Where FTTH previously brought “early adopter” community status, the community without is increasingly seen as a laggard.

Joanne Hovis of CTC Technology and Energy discussed the incremental approach to a community-wide FTTH approach.  Joanne notes that any community with significant public sector facilities – schools, libraries, city and county government and/or health care providers can make a sound business case for fiber investment that will turn a scarce bandwidth scenario into one of abundance – moving organizations from 1.5 Mbps T1’s and 10 Mbps connections into 100 Mbps and Gbps connections.

The locally-owned network can then be incrementally extended to businesses in the downtown area or business park, before tackling the residential market.

Todd McDaniel of College Station, TX used this approach in a slightly different way.  They extended the assets of the Texas A&M network to create an open access network over which private sector providers compete for the community’s public sector and business customers.  He noted the importance of fiber connectivity for business site selections.

Throughout the conference, other speakers noted that the enhanced levels of broadband competition will bring price and service benefits to the community’s businesses whether they are customers of the community network or remain with the incumbent providers.  They also noted that virtually all RFPs from site selectors now have questions regarding fiber and/or broadband connectivity.

Craig Settles put forth an interesting point about the importance of who leads community broadband initiatives.  He argues that the local economic development organization should be at the forefront rather than IT people (too technical) or elected officials (too political).  Economic development officials can argue on the basis of community need rather than a specific technology solution.  He believes that a community commitment to connectivity can be successfully marketed as a commitment to the future.  He recommends economic developers find a tech geek mentor to increase leadership understanding of tech choices.

This is a short summary of just some of the good speakers at this event.

FCC expands uses of the Connect America Fund: Next Steps

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Bill_ColemanAt the Border to Border Broadband Conference, Heather Gold of the FTTH Council provided a quick overview of the new FCC program to expand the uses of the Connect America Fund.  Yesterday I watched a webinar presentation on the topic.  You can find the webinar and/or the slides here http://www.ftthcouncil.org/p/cm/ld/fid=72

The next step in the process is to submit letters of interest to the FCC – who you are, the area you would like to serve with broadband, the selected technology, the anchor tenants covered and your partners.  They want an estimated cost of construction and some operational details.  This is a non-binding statement of interest rather than an application.

The FCC will use these letters and prospective projects to create the rules and the budgets for the formal program to be announced in the early spring.  There would then be a short application window during which you can apply.  So in addition to the letter, communities really need to start working with their prospective partners to be ready to put in an application.

I encourage you to review the webinar and plot your next steps.

Broadband comes up at Minnesota State Economic Competitiveness Summit

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Bill_ColemanIt was interesting to attend the DEED Conference this week – State Economic Competitiveness Summit.  Danna MacKenzie, new director of the Office of Broadband facilitated a session on broadband and economic development that included Wade Fauth of Blandin Foundation. The Blandin Foundation blog posted excerpts from Wade’s talk…

In his opening remarks, Blandin Foundation Vice President Wade Fauth explained how rural communities need both broadband access, and the ability to use it, in order to thrive — and even survive –in an ever more globalized world.

“Our long standing mission has been to strengthen rural Minnesota communities. We have the privilege of doing this work today because of an investment that the community of Grand Rapids made 110 years ago in a piece of indispensable infrastructure. In 1902, the community harnessed the power of the rapids on the Mississippi River by building a dam that powered a paper mill that built our community and organization.

The Foundation has not forgotten its roots. Part of what we do today is to identify and invest in the next generations of indispensable infrastructure. We believe that broadband is the indispensable infrastructure of the 21st century.”

Mirroring the conference theme, he continued

“From our deep experience with communities, we see that capitalizing on the promise of the Internet is as much about investing in human capacity as it is about investing in technological capacity. We’ve seen over and over how well-leveraged investment in broadband access and use can breathe vibrancy into communities and local economies.”

He ended by extending a hand, inviting others — both public and private — to engage in the work that will support concerted, community-based efforts to ensure all citizens are able to take advantage of the Internet.

“This is only possible through partnership — all sorts of partnerships. If we want to meet the expectations and opportunities of all Minnesotans, it will take coordinated investment of resources by all of us. The work of bringing the promise of the Internet to all Minnesotans clearly is not done.”

It was great to see broadband on the agenda at a Minnesota economic development conference.  No such topic at the EDAM conference also held this week.

As I listened to the many speakers talk about workforce, innovation, inclusion and marketing challenges and opportunities, I kept thinking about the relevance of the Intelligent Community framework that includes these four elements, plus broadband.  Blandin Foundation has been using this framework for several years now to help rural communities develop strategies and projects that increase their economic competitiveness.  At the state level, I think leaders are connecting the need for quality, ubiquitous broadband as a tool for reaching state goals.

They did highlight the new “Made in Minnesota” database.  All community economic developers should get their businesses listed.  Check it out.

Rural Broadband Coalition talks about options with Electric Coops

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Bill_ColemanThanks to Dave Russell at Calix for passing on notice of a webinar hosted by the Rural Broadband Coalition, a membership group of rural utilities, mostly rural electric utilities, but also includes municipalities.  I listened in on Monday.  Based on the reaction of participants, this could lead to something big!

If your community and surrounding rural area is under-served or un-served and is served by a rural electric cooperative, you should contact your cooperative manager to either review Monday’s webinar (https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/playback/Playback.do?id=3ac9uh) or participate in this Thursday’s repeat event (https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/registrations/new?cid=uvo81olo5ikk) .  Maybe even volunteer to head to their office and listen in together!

The FCC recently decided to check the interest levels of rural electric providers in offering broadband and in using Connect America Funds (CAF) to do so. CAF is a newer FCC program, utilizing Universal Service Funds (USF), designed to spur the deployment of broadband in un- and under-served areas.  These funds are currently reserved for “eligible telecom carriers.”

Interested utilities are asked to submit a non-binding “Expression of Intent” to the FCC to indicate their project area, the technology solution, and estimated costs and subsidy requested.  RTC has some tools available to help the utilities complete this task.  The purpose of this process is to help the FCC understand the industry interest and the scale of the need.

For more information, your local electric cooperative can contact Alyssa Clemsen, Manager of Industry Affairs, Rural and Infrastructure Issues, at 202-833-6829 or Alyssa.clemsen@utc.org or http://ruralbroadbandcouncil.org/.

A report from the Gigabit Highway Conference in Austin TX hosted by the FTTH Council…

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Bill_ColemanSome very interesting presentations at this conference earlier this week.  Here are some highlights…

Federal news

  • The FCC USF fund rules are still in development.  With the new chairman, previous decision and priorities may change, including the rules for competitive bidding.  Speaker Tom Cohen suggests that communities and providers need to be ready to jump if the incumbent ILECs reject the funding as offered, though these same companies can compete in the bidding process as well.
  • Mary Campanola of the RUS Telecom program talked about the increased flexibility of the Community Connect fund – you can now draw the lines to the service area.  Currently, you are ineligible if you receive 3 Mb broadband which the feds come out to verify.  The new service must be at least 5 Mb with the current rules.  15% cash match is required.

Patricia Shorter of federal EDA in Commerce and her colleague talked about how EDA can fund fiber infrastructure development and pointed to the Economic Development Districts (MN RDC’s plus the West Central Initiative) as the gateway to those funds – job creation and retention are important in these projects.  They have funds for strategy development and implementation.  Depending on demographic and economic indicators, grant funds range from 50% to 80%.  It seems like these dollars might be used for funding lateral fiber runs off of middle mile networks.  Key phrases – Collaborative Regional Innovation, public-private partnerships, global competitiveness, economic distress and underserved communities.

A panel that included US Ignite, CISCO and a game developer has very interesting conversation around the sustainable business model for broadband development.  The US Ignite speaker talked about why health and education are such important drivers of broadband – a limited number of experts to whom many people want to connect.  The question on this was whether this would drive revenue to the providers adequate to fund network development.  The CISCO speaker talked about video and mobile as two drivers of innovation and that residential style applications are now driving development of business applications, gaming as an example.  With the game developer, the elimination of latency was noted as equal or more important than bandwidth availability.  High quality applications will drive them from niche to mainstream.  In justifying Gigabit networks, they will now do the same things, but faster.  In the future, there will be new things.

There was also a panel of expanding Gb providers.  One provider in Mississippi, C Spire, was planning to expand their business and wanted to check community interest so they published an RFP.  52 communities submitted responses with nine finalists selected.  They noted that their expected payback for business networks was two- three years, with longer paybacks on residential investments.  While residential ARPU (average revenue per unit) is $105 for residential, the business ARPU was two – three times that.

I facilitated a panel with Sharon Strover of the University of Texas-Austin, Doug Sicker of University of Colorado-Boulder and John Horrigan, a noted broadband researcher.

Sharon talked about the her research which points to increased broadband adoption as a driver of economic activity.  There is a clear difference between similar counties that are either above 60% adoption versus below 40% adoption.  The higher adoption counties had greater economic growth as measured in income and employment and attracted more “creative class” residents.

Doug Sicker supervised graduate student research that shows that a fiber connection adds between $3,000 and $7,000 in value to a home using three communities in New York as a study area.  He suggested that communities get their realtors to start listing fiber optics as an asset on the MLS listing page.

John Horrigan talked about digital readiness, which is a more flexible indicator the digital literacy as it can be used to measure a more complete range of knowledge rather than just being able to log on to a computer, send and email and surf the web.    His studies show that only 20% are making full use of technology.

It was a fun conference.  An entertaining highlight was watching representatives of Google and ATT engage in word play over their soon to be competing services in Austin, deployment plans, pole attachment battles, marketing plans, etc.

Finally, I want to say that you can see that the boom in knowledge work is on in Austin.  Similar to Minneapolis, there was lots of construction, live music, restaurants and bicycles.  While waiting for my coffee at a local shop, the server acknowledged my Surly Beer shirt and said that he had just moved from Minneapolis within the past 90 days.  The next customer in line had just moved from New York City.  Both looked to be in their 20’s.  My Minneapolis friend moved there just to see what was happening there; the New Yorker had moved for a job in the tech industry. There is definite competition for the talent of the future.  I also met an entrepreneur who is planning to open three to four new, for-profit engineering schools in what he sees as tech hubs.  Palo Alto, Austin, Brooklyn and Columbus.  We have our work cut out here in MN!

Midcontinent offers reduced rates to low income households

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Bill_ColemanMidcontinent Communications operates triple play networks in a number of Minnesota communities.  I talked with Midcontinent’s Tom Simmons, SVP of Public Policy, at the recent Connect Minnesota Broadband Summit.  He told me about a new digital inclusion program that they are rolling out across their system that will provide a low-cost option for low-income households.

For $9.95, households that meet the federal Lifeline program requirements can subscribe to a 5 Mb/1 Mb broadband service.  This service includes free installation and a free modem with wi-fi capabilities.

This is a real opportunity for community broadband leaders in Midcontinent communities to let key stakeholders know about this program – school administrators, social service agencies and other organizations that work directly with people with low-incomes.

I also see that Midcontinent also has a grant-giving foundation with an online application form.  That looks like an opportunity to help bring additional funding to your community initiatives!

I’d love to hear from other Minnesota providers who are offering reduced rates. We have mentioned Comcast, CenturyLink, Sjoberg Cable, Connect2Compete, and special cases in Itasca County – there may be more out there and we’d like to know about them.

Cooperatives for Broadband? A primer on an option for rural areas

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Bill_ColemanCooperatives are an important part of Minnesota’s economic and cultural history and, for those in attendance at the Co-op= Community Development Conference last Friday, a path to future community vitality.  I felt lucky to attend.  Mark Ritchie, MN Secretary of State was the keynote speaker and talked about the link between Minnesota’s long standing culture of community engagement, voting, volunteerism and our standing as the land of cooperatives.  Kudos to Secretary Ritchie for sticking around and participating in small group round table discussions after his speech proving that learning is a two-way street.

Here are some key things that I learned on Friday.  As I write this, I do not have access to the agenda and don’t have full names and affiliations – sorry about that!

There is growing interest in the cooperative movement by students.  Online courses on Co-ops are now emerging.

According to Ruby, there are six myths about co-ops.

  1. Co-ops are not just hippie grocery store businesses, they are all kinds of co-op businesses.
  2. Co-ops are not non-profits, they are member owned, for profit businesses.
  3. Some say that co-ops are not scalable.  There are many large co-ops – Ace, REI, Great River Energy, Mondragon.
  4. Some say that co-ops have no structure.  Wrong, they have all kinds of structures, they all have a board.  Some have a staff and a formalized management structure.
  5. Co-ops are not just for rich white people; this is wrong on all counts.  Examples include the New Era Cooperative that was formed by workers from closed window manufacturing plant, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives that organizes rural farmers, and others.
  6. Co-ops don’t have an economic impact.  Wrong again as there are over 29,000 companies and over 2 million jobs.

In Minnesota, there are over 1,000 MN co-ops, with many in the top 100.  Minnesota has more co-ops than any other state.

Kevin Edberg says that there are some co-op basics.  Here they are:

  1. A Co-op is a business, a democratic organization controlled by its members.
  2. A Co-op must have a viable business proposition to be able to compete, be adequately capitalized and be well managed.
  3. A Co-op exists to meet the needs of its owner members.  Member satisfaction is the criterion for success, not ROI.
  4. Surplus must be generated (profits) to be reinvested and finance growth.  Some surplus is returned via patronage based on member purchases not ownership share = business loyalty=competitive advantage.
  5. A Co-op needs a compelling need to attract the time and talent of existing and prospective members.  A “nice to have” purpose is not enough motivation; the “need to have” is critical.

The Cooperative Principles are well-established.  The conference organized a neat way to illustrate these principles with a quick “Seven Principles in Seven Minutes.”  Representatives from seven co-ops each talked on one of these principles with an example from their own co-op.

  1. Voluntary and open membership
  2. Democratic member control
  3. Member Economic Participation
  4. Autonomy and independence
  5. Education, training and Information
  6. Cooperation among cooperatives
  7. Concern for community

I participated in a finance session by the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund.  While there are a few differences, the credit analysis process seemed pretty similar to any economic development fund.  The critical difference is that consideration of owner equity and commitment is replaced by the same factors applied to the co-op board and membership.

Most new cooperatives fall into three types – Housing, Food and Worker-owned.  Of course, there are also the infrastructure co-ops that provide such great services and leadership in rural Minnesota – electric and telecom co-ops.

I learned that Wisconsin Extension Service has a strong program on co-operative development so I need to check their web site for tools and information.  I also learned that Wisconsin has some rural broadband cooperatives forming so I definitely want to learn about that.

I want to take a moment to recognize that Boreal Access is a broadband co-op located in Cook County.  Their role in providing Internet access will soon be supplanted by Arrrowhead Electric Cooperative, seemingly a very nice hand-off from wireless and copper to FTTH!  Boreal Access will continue on in new and exciting ways.

Video Issues: Quality and Reliability at Scale

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Bill_ColemanI attended a very interesting discussion of video conferencing this week at Video Guidance in Bloomington.  The folks at Video Guidance have helped Blandin Foundation on some of the technical details of video conferencing at some of their conferences.

The primary takeaway from the seminar was that the forward thinking on video communications is to provide Quality and Reliability at Scale.  Meaning that video communications should not be limited to board and conference rooms, but should extend to the desktop and to mobile devices.   Video networks need to extend beyond the enterprise desktop to reach as varied of places from factory floors to people’s homes

Health care examples include doctors being able to monitor patients in critical care units from their homes and nurses being able to monitor post-op patients or the chronically ill in their homes.  Manufacturing examples include video discussions around equipment repair between workers on the factory floor and equipment technicians or between fashion designers in New York and production facilities in China.

Key distinctions in video vendors now rely more on quality software solutions over robust infrastructure.  Video hardware has become more of a commodity.  While the big room systems provide incredible quality and experience, desktop and mobile convenience are going to be be more important in many situations.  For the big sales pitch, the former may be desirable; for everyday collaboration, the latter will be increasingly important.

While Quality and Reliability at Scale is the goal of the industry, they also recognize that Ease of Use and Affordability are things that they customer will also demand.  People are making increasing use of applications like FaceTime and Skype.  While it is hard to argue with free, business customers are seeking a product that is more like Skype Plus ~ an affordable, but professional quality service.  There was some laughs around the concept that while telecom networks are supposed to be reliable at 99.999% (five nines), the free services deliver more like nine fives (55.5555555%).

It is always great to be invited to learn what is happening in emerging technologies.  Learning from vendors is a great way to keep up to date and hear about market trends and new products.

Reporting from the FTTH Conference in Tampa

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Bill_ColemanSession 1: Financing Fiber Networks.

The Tuesday morning general session was on Financing Fiber Networks.  Blair Levin was the panel facilitator.

Gillis Cashman (GC) of MC Partners talked about the difficulties in financing networks.  That the revenue streams must be strengthened by revenues from Netflix, etc.

Andy Smith (AS) – CoBank

Have been lending in telecom for 30 years, with $2.4 million in outstanding loans.  Most of what they have been doing lately is middle mile networks that are connecting cell networks.  Recently they have financed a FTTH focused company overbuilder.  Lending against cash flow, they are seeking established, critical mass companies. (This certainly limits the pool of qualified firms!)

Jeffrey Brandon (JB) of Waller Capital  – His top considerations are questions of consumer demand, the quality of the competition and the proposer’s demonstrated  operational capacity.  (One of things I wonder about is that market surveys are often positioned against the incumbent’s current competitive position rather than an anticipated market response.)

Question from Blair Levin: Will incumbents step in?  Why?  Will increased city flexibility on ROW and pole attachments, permitting, etc. incent incumbents to invest??  Will demand for bandwidth require an incumbent response?

JB – not expecting incumbents to act – FIOS/Uverse investments have not been great winners for ROI.

AS – many small LECs have already build this networks.  Everyone agrees that there is a need.  The question is ROI.  They want to be able to provide the services, but….  This is a long term transition from copper to fiber.  50 years to build a copper network, fiber – how long???

GC – Same old thing with deployments as exemplified by cable and cellular – big cities first, rural last!!

There is lots of uncertainty caused by video business models – who is going to get the revenue? There is a need to monetize video entertainment since this is driving the bandwidth demand.  Presently, video over internet is only 5% of video screen time with only growth in the future.  This conundrum applies to all cloud applications.    Consumers pay to get Internet service.  Netflix pays to connect their servers to the Internet.  Netflix drives broadband subscriptions.

Levin – What about Network neutrality?  The FCC rules on network neutrality are now in court.  The tossing out the non-discrimination clause is likely.  Netflix drives demand for broadband, but requires too much bandwidth.  Cable makes huge margins on broadband so should they stop whining?…, but the increasing demand for bandwidth drives capital investment requirements.  Who pays – content providers or customers?

JB – Is net neutrality even important?  Either way the consumer is going to pay – either Comcast or Netflix?  Does it matter?  Some companies also get advertising so should the consumer pay twice?

BL – Is wireless the future?  Verizon investments indicate that they think wireless is where it’s at.  Will LTE be a competitor for fiber?  What about universal service?

AS – new USF rules are affecting rural carriers in a big way.  FACT – rural carriers would not be there if not for the USF and other provisions.  Maybe some combo of fiber and wireless?  Wireless is limited in capabilities – so wireless only is probably not the only answer, especially in denser markets.

JB – wireless has a fraction of capabilities, but is mobile.  Fiber is unlimited, but expensive and non-mobile.  Verizon and ATT are pushing hard to add fiber to their towers with the intention of pulling out their copper and not replacing it.

BL – What will Google be doing?  They have been disruptive in changing the debate?

JB – Not sure Google made the right choices on locations in KC and Austin.  Lots of PR, but skeptical of national impact.  What is the real plan?  Not sure.  Test bed for their own applications and purposes?

AS – Google not likely to go real rural.  How are they monetizing these networks? Highlights the need and benefits of fiber for a national policy discussion.

JB – Google has the cash if they wanted to spend it.  Austin, again, is very well served already .  (I read today that ATT will soon have Gb service in high demand/good demographic sections of Austin.   Time Warner and ATT Uverse plus a third competitor are already there.

Financing advice –

JB – Be able to present to investors – strong market, demonstrate weak competition, combination of factors that would demonstrate ability to execute.

AS – Agree with JB and add incentives to the providers with ROW, pole attachments, ability to lower capital requirements.  Plus demonstrate market demand by getting people to sign customer agreements.  Financial commitment, even small, from customers is great evidence of demand.

GC – Is the community underserved?  If so, you can get to 40-50 % pretty quickly.

Several providers talked about their fiber to the home deployments.

Session 2: Chattanooga Gig City – Katie Espereth

They now only offer two speeds  – 100 Mb and 1 Gb.  1 Gb is $70 unbundled.  While the network was originally deployed for smart grid and is showing its value there in management and repair, the broadband services are now offering financial subsidy to the electric utility rather than the other way around.

A thousand new businesses and 6700 new jobs have been documented.

Chattanooga employees are highly motivated because they feel they are doing great and big things!  We ignore the other providers and always try and take the high road.  They have really focused on being self-sufficient.  Consultants were great to start, but we put an emphasis on learning and becoming expert.

Expect mistakes, learn from them and move on!  (Only 30% take rate which seems puzzling but they still make money).  Smartgrid has been a cool way to manage their network, increase reliability and downtime, and become more efficient..

Cullen McCarty of Smithville Communications – Indiana Digital Gateway talked about their network.  They have been actively marketing to gamers.

Beth Ringley – The Motive Group

Opelka Power Services – 14,000 homes passed.

Key factor – Visionary Mayor!

Linkage to the muni electric is critical!!!  Being the electric utility is an asset – (why do MN muni electrics not do this?????)

Phase one. business, regulatory, finance plans and execution

Phase two – Contracts, fear and politics

Phase three – The REAL preparation, organizational changes, the right people in the right jobs, doing the right things.

Communicate, educate, train.  Processes and systems are critical!

Barry Walton

Bell Aliant provider in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Ontario  800,000 homes

Fiber installation brought challenges to be in touch with communities and utilities.

“Christmas Day” – every week they have build goals – delivering fiber is like delivering Christmas to customers.  And Christmas is never late!

Started with 33,000 homes in 2009, peaked in 320,000 in 2011.

They closed the presentation with a customer video mashup – A customer submitted a video of himself singing the famous Doors song with a twist – “Come on baby, light my fiber!  Set my net on fire!”

Session 3: An interesting presentation on deploying FTTH by Raf Meersman of Ghent, Belgium.

Lots of good information on targeted investment for early network deployment.  Cool GIS/data tools that identify least cost deployment areas, best customer reach, best demographics and expected take rates all analyzed to see which areas provide best ROI.  Also targeted market segments as key planning tool.  And the analysis of a blend of technologies.  Scenario planning is required to clearly understand the options and make the right choices.

I am not sure much of this goes on in most telecom planning in Minnesota.  If incumbents are doing this type of analysis, we sure never hear about it.  Public networks generally focus on 100% coverage of their geographical area and do not cherry pick.

Mobilizing Community Collaboration to Spur Demand at FTTH Council in FL

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Bill_ColemanI was pleased to be selected to speak at the FTTH Council conference in Tampa.   My topic was “Mobilizing Community Collaboration to Spur Demand.”  There was a good crowd of providers and community people.  I was able to talk about Intelligent Community, MIRC, BBC and the efforts that Minnesota communities are making to increase their vitality.

jim baller in FLAI am now listening to Jim Baller (Jim was a keynote speaker at the Blandin Conference a couple years ago – always ahead of the curve) and representatives from Danville VA and College Station TX.    Sounds like an Intelligent Community presentation – Broadband, Innovation, Knowledge Workers and Marketing.  Nothing on Digital Inclusion …yet!  Broadband is the essential infrastructure especially for multinational entities.

Danville is an open access fiber network.  The city provides service to the public sector; private sector providers serve business customers.

College Station is more focused on using the private sector to make through significant public incentives – Tax Increment Financing, regulatory speeding and cost-reduction.

Michael Curri of SNG is going to speak next.  Michael was a webinar host for Blandin Foundation just last year!

Deploying a broadband feasibility study

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Bill_ColemanOver the years, Blandin Foundation has provided matching grant funds to enable communities to conduct broadband feasibility studies.  These studies provide a pathway for decision makers to spur investment in broadband networks, generally fiber to the home networks, in their communities.  Some of these studies are for a single community; others cover an entire county and one covered a multi-township area in sprawling St. Louis County.  The studies all cover market demand, technology alternatives, costs, prospective revenues, operating models and other considerations.  Several communities were blessed with excellent timing and their studies were completed prior to the available ARRA funding program.  Cook County, Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services and Lac qui Parle County each have brand new wide area fiber to the home networks now in place as a result.  The financial assistance that these entities received (an electric cooperative, a joint powers board and a telecom cooperative, respectively) made these projects possible.

Blandin Foundation arranged a conference call between the communities to check on the current status of the projects, the assets on which they continue to move these projects forward and the primary constraints that are holding them back. There are five communities that completed feasibility studies after the stimulus window closed.  Four of the five communities were able to participate in the conference call.  All of them continue to pursue their broadband projects with some believing that they are moving towards the groundbreaking and others still hoping that a clear pathway emerges.

It was a very interesting discussion.  It was heartening to hear of their continued, dedicated and creative efforts to move forward.  While all of the communities will rely on some form of public – private partnership, the form of those partnerships fall within a wide range of relationships, from operating to ownership.  Some hope to make a single giant leap forward; others see incremental improvements as their likely path to better broadband.  It was an interesting discussion around the desirability of incremental improvements and whether the incremental progress might actual hinder the goal of a FTTP network.

All of these communities are laying the groundwork for other communities to follow.  They deserve thanks for these leadership efforts!

Bits and Bytes presentation in Trout Lake Township

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Bill_ColemanIt was fun to attend the Trout Lake Township Supper and Community Discussion this week.  Trout Lake Township is just south of Bovey and a bit east of Grand Rapids.  This beautiful place, of course, has Trout Lake as its centerpiece.  Only a very small portion of the Township is served by terrestrial broadband.  Cell service is also spotty within the township.  Many people use satellite for their broadband service.  The Township has a broadband committee that has been working to bring a better wired solution to the community.  They have a list of over 90 households who indicated that they would subscribe to broadband if it was available.

I partnered with Mark Zimmerman of Itasca Economic Development Corporation to give a brief presentation.  In my presentation “Bits and Bytes”, I discussed the various types of broadband with their associated strengths and weaknesses as well as costs.  Mark Zimmerman talked about the three projects at the center of the Itasca Blandin Broadband Community effort.  Using the town’s satellite broadband account through Exede, I was able to demonstrate several national applications like Pandora and WebMd as well as the school district and local hospital web sites.

Prior to the presentation, I connected to a speediest application to test the satellite service as it was the first time that I had connected via satellite.  The speed of the connection was an impressive 18 Mb, which is 150% of the advertised speed of 12 Mb.  Upload was about 2 Mb.  I know that latency is part of the satellite experience, but it was disconcerting as a presenter to click and then have to wait.  On the speed test, the latency was over 500 milliseconds.  My home Comcast latency is usually around 18 ms, even through my wi-fi network.  While the availability of satellite Internet and its recent improvements in capacity must be considered a technology marvel, the people of Trout Lake continue to pursue providers willing to fiber up the community so as to enjoy the same pricing and level of service as their nearby neighbors in Bovey and Grand Rapids.

The Art of Branding a Community: Notes from a Webinar

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Today I participated in a webinar on The Art of Branding a Community: The Ten Things You Need To Know and Do hosted by the Economic Developers of Alberta and presented by Roger Brooks. Here is the official description…

“Branding” is the keyword of the decade, but what does it really mean? Most people don’t understand what a brand really is or how to actually build one. This presentation demystifies and explains the process of branding for umbrella organizations (multiple communities), cities, downtowns, and marketing professionals. Through case histories, dozens of photos, and humorous stories, attendees will learn what it takes to create a successful brand, how to make it obvious, and how that translates to cash!

Our presenter, Roger Brooks, is one of North America’s most sought after experts in the creation of great destinations, and has worked with nearly 1000 communities, successfully guiding them in their community branding, revitalization and marketing efforts. Roger is well known for energizing communities into action; providing ideas they can implement today to make a difference tomorrow.

It was an interesting webinar – not necessarily technology-centric but provided some good advice on how to better user technology to promote your community and how to promote the technology in your community. The focus was on making your community a destination and making your community a net winner – bring more money in than sending out.

Brooks discussed change drivers

  1. Communities are looking for their second act – previous reasons for existing have passed. – Transportation or natural resource was initial reason Global competition
  2. The Internet has changed everything – access to everything.  95% use the Internet to decide everything.  Dinner, work, vacation, etc. “what are we looking for?”  Activity first – city or area second Not a gateway to anywhere else, not something for everyone! The website has to close the sale.
  3. We are subject to marketing overload.  Everyone has got a web site.  Drowning in it.  97% of community is ineffective.  Including all media, web, print, billboards, etc…  because we filter out so much that does not appeal to us.  Especially when everyone is saying the same thing.
  4. Need to market and act like business.  Specialization is the key.  “What do you have that the people that you are hoping to attract that they cannot do closer to home?  What makes you special?  Why would they invest in your community?  Clearly better as cited by third party endorsement.
  5. Group hug and membership motivation is negative!

Ten things to need to do to win

  1. Logos and slogans are not brands.  They are marketing messages that support the brand.  2% of brand/logos but 98% of the political attention locally.
  2. A brand is a perception – what people think of you rather than what you say… Visual cues, people and attitudes, word of mouth, publicly/social media. Negative perception sometimes require repositioning.  Emotion is important. A brand is a promise that you will deliver on the brand/image.
  3.  Successful brands are specific and narrow.  If it is generic and could apply elsewhere, your brand has failed.  Jettison the generic!  Throughout your marketing materials. Promote the primary lure. Can still sell the other stuff, but narrow marketing focus.  Specific excellence brings recognition from 3rd parties. Avoid -gateway,  explore, discover, visit, 4th season destination – Eco Dev has a similar list. Market what will close the sale..!
  4. Your name should be synonymous with your community.
  5. Brands are built on product and experiences not marketing – things to do, not the location. Economic development – opportunity , not land, labor, etc.
  6. Never use focus groups, ever!  Cute and clever rarely work.  Don’t do branding by public consent.  Feasibility not sentiment.  Top down branding fails 98% of the time.  Groups can do this work, but it should be business oriented.
  7. Never roll out a brand until you can deliver on the promise.  A brand is really earned,  not an immediate thing.  You might have to work locally rather than externally
  8. Need a branding development and marketing action plan a to do list.
  9. Based on feasibility, not sentiment.
    1. a. Assess
    2. b. Ask the locals about community vision.
    3. c. Do the research., compare alternatives
    4. Is this something that target audience will come, can they do it closer to home. Questions to consider:
    5. Will the locals buy in over time.
    6. Will the private sector make investments?
    7. How much will this cost and what is the ROI.
    8. Niche, then expanding over time.
    9. Can you make it obvious?
    10. Will it extend the season
    11. Champions to make it work!
    12. Things to do, not just look at: Strategies, goals, objective – no more than 10 pages.  Action plan is a to do list.  What, who, how much and from
  10. Don’t let politics kill the effort – brave leaders rather than group consensus.

Brands require continuity!  Tourism, chambers, economic development, government.

Umbrella brands

  •  Differentiate the area or region
  •  Find unique community brand
  •  Ways to work together.

LIVE THE BRAND

Industrial Design – York PA

Showtime Festivals  – El Dorado, Arkansas

Cultivate

Creative Class – (near NASA) League City, TX

Walnut Creek, CA – destination shopping – “Walnut Creek Collection”

Alpena, MI – Sanctuary of the Great Lakes

Branding Pledge – I promise to promote only what is truly unique. I promise to be different. I promise to not say what other people are saying.

Final Tips:

  1. Differentiate yourself from those you are trying to attract
  2. Get an emotional response
  3. why?
  4. Be memorable

Community marketing continuity saves money and stretches budgets. at least 40% should be digital

Social media is brand building; will take at least three years.

Need to watch mobile and social media to monitor and steer social media conversations.

Gear your marketing to those in the late 20’s /30’s, as the boomers follow the young people.  Multi-generational travel is really happening so that families travel to be together and that boomers are travelling to see their kids.

Positioning, then investment.

Learn more: www.rogerbrooksinternational.com

BBC Community Project: eBusiness training at Fond du Lac

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Bill_ColemanAs a Blandin Broadband Community, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa set small business technology development as a priority.  Their goal is to spur small business formation and use of technology through small business training sessions on a variety of business technology strategies and tools. They will focus on e-commerce and small business training for trial members on Fond du Lac Reservation.

Like any community, Fond du Lac has many residents who own and operate small businesses, many of those operate out of their homes.  Within the Fond du Lac Reservation, many of these small business owners live in the rural countryside where broadband may not be readily available and learning technology tools may be difficult.

The Fond du Lac will bring small businesses together at community facilities where computers and connectivity are available for use by community members.  The training will provide hands-on experience that will show business owners how to research, purchase, market and sell.  The Fond du Lac steering team has discussed the creation of an online community marketplace where small businesses could sell their products on a shared web site that cooperatively promotes all of their goods, many of which are locally created food products, artisan crafts and artwork.   The ultimate goal would be to increase incomes of Fond du Lac tribal members.

Advice for Growing Vital Communities with Technology

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Bill_ColemanNorm Jacknis of Cisco gave an interesting presentation on community economics, innovation and jobs this morning at the Intelligent Community Summit in NYC.

Norm argued that jobs may be disappearing but that there will be many opportunities to earn a living.  He talked about how technology is and will continue to mean that location is less important as information is available everywhere.  He talked about the concept that chasing businesses is far less strategic than growing local businesses and that industry cluster strategies are out of date as technology overcomes distance.

Making people aware and enabling their use should be a community priority – helping lifelong learners access world class information and training and helping businesses use online technology tools are the most important strategies.

On Innovation, he discussed sustaining innovation which refers to constant improvements and technology adoption by organizations of all types.  This enables people to do more with less, but might actually decrease employment.  Disruptive innovation is different – it meets unmet needs and does create jobs.

Finally, he talked about the importance of creating a sense of place, both in terms of economic environment like creating a co-working space or business incubator and making the most of your community assets.  He showed several examples of dismal looking places being transformed through technology-based art.

Some good lessons for communities of all sizes!