Blandin eNews: Stirring the Pot
As originally posted on the Blandin foundation Enewsletter…
Stirring the Pot
PART ONE
NTCA, the industry organization for rural telecom coops, came out with a very nice white paper this week “The Smart Rural Community.” http://tinyurl.com/cgjjpay I chuckle to myself (the hazards of the home office) as I ponder whether one would rather live in a smart community or an intelligent community. Or which makes the better acronym for communities here in Minnesota – MIRC or SMiRC! No one likes a smirc!
More importantly, the report highlights great examples of active use of technology applications in rural communities, including some here in Minnesota, that are facilitated by quality networks, engaged providers and forward looking businesses, educators, health care administrators and farmers. I am excited to think that our MIRC demonstration communities have enough excellent examples in all these areas to fill an entire book.
The NTCA report highlighted the leadership of their member coops in these case studies and that is great to see. In our MIRC project, there are a couple of the 11 communities where providers have been very actively engaged and sharing leadership of effort to drive adoption of broadband. In just a few others, providers are regular partners and participate as called upon for specific activities. I believe that the balance of the communities could benefit from stronger interaction and shared effort to achieve the common goal of more users with more uses of broadband. With reluctant providers or where there are multiple providers, these types of partnerships can be difficult. Yet the goal of expanding the pie and driving sophistication and bandwidth use should be one that provides a platform for collaboration. As we move forward and continue our broadband and Intelligent Community activities, I am very interested to hear about how we can enable better collaboration between providers and communities.
A surprise treat near the end of this document – a statement by the NTCA establishing 20 Mb to the home as the minimum required for a smart community. This is a clear rejection of the FCC’s woefully inadequate 4 Mb standard for rural communities.
PART TWO
The new Connect MN maps are out and the areas unserved by broadband continue to shrink. By the end of 2012 construction season, additional areas will be served. My favorite map is the one that shows the density of unserved areas below. As we know, there are places in Minnesota where few people live; the BWCA and some of the large peat bogs in north central and northwest Minnesota are examples, but there are still quite a number of areas (gold and brown) where good numbers of people live and are unserved. I have been working with some of these people in Redwood County, Kanabec County and the Cloquet Valley area north of Duluth between the iron range and the North Shore. I have received calls from rural Isanti County and the Wadena School District. They live in areas with no broadband and providers with no plans to provide broadband. These areas have a long way to go and not many tools designed to help them.
The second map shows (dark green and blue colors) the places that generally meet the NTCA standard of 20 Mb, which also matches the top end of the State of MN broadband goal. Many community networks actually meet this standard as do some rural areas that are served by cooperatives. So the state broadband task force has two significant tasks – encouraging broadband deployment to those without access and encouraging upgrades to those with broadband that currently do not meet the state or NTCA standard for a smart community.
Dakota Future hosts Minnesota Broadband Task Force Monthly Meeting
Yesterday Bill Coleman led the hosting team at Dakota County, welcoming the Minnesota Broadband Task Force, who held their monthly meeting in Dakota County. It was an opportunity for CTAC client Dakota Future to showcase much of the work that Dakota County has done in terms of promoting and facilitating better broadband for better business.
Bill Coleman spoke about the Dakota Future Intelligent Community Initiative
[slideshare id=12592110&doc=dakotafuture-120418124742-phpapp02]
You can get the full notes from the session from the Blandin on Broadband blog.
Stirring the Pot: April 2012
As originally posted in Blandin Foundation’s Broadband eNews:
Stirring the Pot
Last week in his MPR Blog, Dave Peters took an interesting look at the ever-evolving fiber vs. wireless question. http://tinyurl.com/7x23wq4 It is a question that I get at every community broadband meeting that I facilitate.
On one hand, you have fiber. You know what you are getting with fiber – high capacity, extremely reliable, triple play services and more, and quite expensive to deploy in the rural countryside.
When people talk about wireless, confusion abounds. People use a combination of marketing and technical terms interchangeably. When bandwidth caps are discussed, people want to know “just how much is 2 Gb?” Wireless technologies may or may not be influenced by weather, trees and/or terrain. Frequencies may or may not be licensed. Accuracy of provider coverage maps is debated.
Peters’ blog also raised this important question – If an area is served first by a wireless broadband provider, will that kill the market for investment in upgraded FTTH or FTTN services? Will rural residents be generally satisfied enough with a lower capacity wireless service that there will not be the groundswell of support and commitment to motivate a significant investment in fiber, thereby causing an area to be underserved long into the future? I tend to think probably so.
Yet we would never argue the opposite case – that a new fiber network would dissuade investment in wireless technologies. Mobile connectivity is now an expectation and people have proven that they are willing to pay for it. The large wireless carriers have announced aggressive plans to extend 3G and 4G coverage areas to more rural areas.
I was quoted in the blog as stating that people need both wired and wireless services. I also think that the bar for fiber advocates continues to rise. More than ever, they need to demonstrate the value of large bandwidth applications, especially those that have been or could be deployed by local institutions like schools and health care providers.
More than ever, communities need to have a technology plan that ensures both fiber-based and wireless services coupled with an application deployment plan. Communities lacking any of the three – wired, wireless and applications – will struggle to compete for talented people and business investment.
Stirring the Pot: March 2012
As originally posted in Blandin Foundation’s Broadband eNews:
I am part of a team just starting work on a project in Southwest Alaska – with place names like Kodiak Island, Unalaska and Dillingham. This rural region wants to make best use of a new federal stimulus project that will increase broadband speeds significantly in some places but leave other places with dial-up and satellite. Parts of the region have fiber networks for the last mile but rely on satellite for middle mile.
I know how important community leadership is in a process like this, but the challenges of distance in this region are immense. In Minnesota, distances are relatively small in comparison – another town is 7 – 10 miles down the road. Regional centers are separated by 100 miles or fewer. In this region, it can be a 1,000 mile plane ride from one center to another. For us, the immediate challenge is how to meet and engage these regional leaders. Our goal for the longer term is to determine how technology can be used to better connect these regional partners. Beside distance, there are other differences between Minnesota and Alaska. In Minnesota, our road system compares to a mesh network. You can go almost in any direction and form partnerships with other nearby places. In Alaska, the network is a hub and spoke system with hubs in Anchorage for business and education and in Juneau for government.
One of the other things we know in community broadband planning is that the most effective technology leadership is not necessarily an elected or appointed government official. It could be the tech guy on Main Street, the school tech coordinator, a local business or someone working out of their house. Across this region, we will find some of each. We need to use technology to find and connect to these leaders and then to leave a system where they can continue to connect to each other.
Which brings me back to Minnesota, while our distance challenges are almost insignificant in comparison (and believe me, I know about distances here in Minnesota), our challenge of empowering community leadership around all problem solving opportunities is just as real. I receive lots of newsletters from various groups with some excellent top down communications. The big challenge is real multipoint communications, discussions and action planning over distance. Time is short, resources are thin, our leaders are overburdened. It seems that we can do a better job of using technology as a tool for leadership empowerment. I am very interested in your ideas or current practices of how your organization uses technology tools to empower communications between leaders. Let’s hear about them!
Broadband Update in MN for the MN Municipal Utility Association
A presentation given to the MN Municipal Utility Association on
- Opportunities for Municipal Utilities
- Minnesota Broadband Task Force
- Blandin Foundation MIRC Initiative
- Key Infrastructure Projects
Stirring the Pot: February: Investment Incentives
As first published in Blandin Broadband eNews February 2012…
It seems that the communities with little or no broadband are increasingly feeling the pain of this shortcoming. It is no longer theoretical that they will be left behind sometime in the future. Community leaders recognize that they have been left behind and that the tail lights of their well-connected community neighbors are disappearing into the future.
The definition of community is also expanding to include rural residents. Township and county officials are recognizing that operators of farms and home businesses, school children, doctors and older adults need and want broadband. Leaders of town-centered enterprises like banks, hospitals and schools recognize that their on-line presence is underutilized because 40-60 percent of their customers cannot access broadband.
These last-to-be-served areas are not the easiest places to provide robust broadband services. Low density population patterns and significant number of the people least likely to subscribe – older, lower income – are not enticing investment drivers. Yet they need to get connected.
Communities struggle to find solutions from the bottom up. We are seeing some incumbent providers sitting at the table to try and solve these puzzles. It would be helpful to learn from incumbent providers to what investment incentives will be necessary to make rural broadband investment possible. I encourage them to sharpen their pencils and to let us in on a formula that works for them and benefits rural communities.
Making a Community New Year’s Resolution
First published in January 2012 Blandin eNews…
Does your community make New Year’s resolutions? January is a great opportunity to bring people together to talk about goals and improvement. The Intelligent Community framework (focusing on: broadband, knowledge workers, innovation, digital inclusion and marketing/advocacy) provides guidance for organizing and implementing action. Through our MN Intelligent Rural Community (MIRC) projects http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4,I have observed that the most exciting projects are those that link across two or more Intelligent Community elements.
For example, a community may decide to improve public access to broadband and computers by opening up school computer labs extended hours to all residents. To broaden the audience beyond those without computers or broadband Internet access, the community could add a focus on math and science to create knowledge workers by using community volunteers who use math and science – from machinists to scientists – and by taking advantage of online resources â- from Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ to MIT. http://ocw.mit.edu Potential positive outcomes include more support for school technology investments, better linkage between kids and local career opportunities, intergenerational learning and linkages, better math and science test scores and a more Intelligent Community! You could just as easily promote the arts through an approach like this.
A shared goal across our demonstration communities is improved marketing – convincing both residents and non-residents (prospective business owners and tourists) to stop, stay and invest in the community. The U of M Extension http://tinyurl.com/7ys3uul has done a great job educating businesses how to promote themselves online. In today’s economy, everyone is essentially a small business – improving the products through education, marketing themselves to gain income – through employment on site or through telework, self-employment, or growing a business. How can a community use online tools like eFolio Minnesota http://www.efoliominnesota.com/ combined with local web sites to showcase and market local talent – from kids to stay at home parents to retirees? The inventory of talent would be eye-opening for both locals and visitors!
Let us know what your community resolutions are and how you plan to achieve your goals for improvement.
Stirring the Pot: December
First published in Blandin eNews…
Quite a year! What a busy year for broadband activity in Minnesota!!
- Our Blandin Foundation MIRC project is running on all cylinders; all of our partners are doing great work across greater Minnesota. If you were at the recent Broadband Conference in Duluth, you could not help but get excited about all the projects, going from good to great through collaboration with state and local partners.
- Rural counties and townships are working aggressively to ensure that their communities meet the state broadband goal, always seeking partners with incumbent and neighboring providers, but not letting any barriers stop them.
- Stimulus projects are under construction with new advanced services to be delivered to bandwidth hungry customers in 2012.
- A new state broadband task force with an exciting mix of members is in place.
- New federal regulations and programs have been announced but their potential impacts are not yet understood.
- More communities are using the Intelligent Community framework to unite their broadband and economic development strategies.
Thanks to all the great leaders who are making these great things happen. If you are reading this newsletter, you can look in the mirror and see one!
CTAC leads discussion at 2011 MN Broadband Conference
CTAC Founder Bill Coleman was on the planning committee for the 2011 Policy & Progress: Border to Border Broadband conference. The conference was a great success and Bill moderated one of the top sessions: Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities; Demonstration Community Project Coordinators. It was a lively discussion highlighting the broadband adoption projects happening around the state, often with the guidance and support of CTAC staff.
Here is a highlight from the session:
Or you can check out other video updates:
- MIRC Updates: Windom
- MIRC Updates: Thief River Falls
- MIRC Updates: Winona
- MIRC Updates: Benton County
- MIRC Updates: Willmar
- MIRC Updates: Grand Rapids
- MIRC Updates: Upper Minnesota Valley
- MIRC Updates: Worthington
- MIRC Updates: Cook County
Public-Private Partnerships in Broadband Presentation
Bill Coleman speaks on Public-Private Partnerships in Broadband in a Blandin Foundation sponsored pre-conference webinar…
With stimulus funds allocated and clear understanding of the difficulties in obtaining strictly market-based funding, how can underserved areas reach their broadband goals? What are some successful models of public private partnerships?
You can also access an archive of the session.