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!

First published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews…

Broadband discussions continue across the state. For locations that will benefit from stimulus funds, stakeholders are negotiating agreements with vendors, contractors, federal officials and their project partners. For those who missed the stimulus, their discussions are more preliminary. “What do we have? What do we need? How are we going to get there?” Applications to serve on the new state broadband task force will be online by the time this newsletter is published.

I have noticed an uptick in the number of incumbent telephone providers who are now attending and actively participating in community broadband meetings. They know they face a steep challenge to meet the state broadband goal of 10 – 20 Mb by 2015, especially outside of municipal boundaries. They know the costs of network upgrades, how many prospective customers reside in these rural areas and how much customers are generally going to be willing to pay per month for broadband. They also watch their line counts drop as mobile phones replace land lines in home after home. They know that the traditional business financing and ROI requirements are not going to support significant network investments.

The easy and quick answer is “public-private partnerships”. Easy to say; not so easy to do. Many, many questions emerge. Clearly some form of public financing is required. Past state broadband chair Rick King recently suggested state bonding for broadband and that is a likely answer. But the hard questions still hang there. Will state financed networks be privately owned? Will they be required to be open access? Will deals be financed at the county level, statewide or by traditional exchange boundaries? Who owns the risk for repaying the bonds? Does the financing government have regulatory influence on pricing or quality of service? Will publicly-financed networks be built in areas that already meet the state broadband goal or just in unserved/underserved areas? Will there be any cost-benefit analysis required or is 100% coverage really the standard as it is with wireline telephone service? Does the public sector need to get involved in middle mile networks in areas where those are inadequate to support robust local networks?

Rumor has it that significant state telecommunications laws will be rewritten this next legislative session, presumably before the state broadband task force really has a chance to get up and running. If this is the case, we all know that the process timeline is upside down and that rural broadband access will likely suffer. Legislators crack open these big telecom laws only so often and the legislation written before a task force report is issued is likely to have been written more by telecom lobbyists than rural broadband customers.

This fall, Blandin Foundation will be hosting two webinars on these two important topics – federal and state policy on October 12 and public-private partnerships on October 26. Watch for more information soon!

First published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews…

“Work with your existing providers.” A simple statement written in almost every community broadband planning document. It is similar to health advice like “Eat less, exercise more” — easy to say, hard to do.

Improving infrastructure and services is generally the most difficult place for collaboration between communities and providers, yet this is where most and earliest interaction occurs. Communities have high hopes for infrastructure improvements; providers have expectations for high return on investment. In rural areas, these two objectives are generally incompatible. We have seen through the stimulus process that building new broadband infrastructure in many rural areas, especially ubiquitous fiber in the countryside, requires a long investment horizon plus significant subsidies.

At countywide broadband meetings, I am happy when I see the existing providers in the room and lately I am seeing more of them. The incumbent telco always feels the heat from rural residents wanting broadband. The cable company and any CLEC providers are quite happy that they are not in the telco’s position, but show no interest in investing outside municipal boundaries. With budgets as they are, rural county governments are reluctant to even consider taking on a countywide broadband project hoping that someone else will address this problem. Citizen committees are frustrated as they see no solution coming from either private or public entities, yet know that broadband is essential for economic vitality.

As I look at the Connected Minnesota maps, it seems that the most cost-efficent way to meet the state’s border to border goal of 10-20 Mb broadband service would be to upgrade existing provider networks to a fiber to the node network. These improvements may be in the providers’ long term plans, but way beyond the 2015 statewide goal timeframe.

Lacking a current statewide funding mechanism, how might a rural county and incumbent provider partner(s) develop a partnership to stimulate the necessary investment? What would it cost per household to upgrade to a FTTN network with shorter copper loops? Do existing providers know what this would cost? Would they share this information and work with a county to explore the various funding possibilities (DEED infrastructure grants, revenue bonds, property tax assessments, 2012 state bonding bill, other)? Would this open the way for a statewide solution? Blandin Foundation’s Robust Networks Feasibility Fund might be used to develop mechanisms for making this work. http://tinyurl.com/43zxrmr

Building market demand for broadband should be a simpler way to collaborate. More broadband customers means sustainability and profits or providers; their interest is clear. More users and more sophistication of use creates a smarter, more productive, more prosperous community. The Blandin Foundation’s new Digital Inclusion Community Partnership provides an opportunity for providers and communities to work together in a win-win partnership. Lack of a computer is a top barrier to the use of broadband; lack of skills is also important, but without a device to connect to the network, skills lack value. Grants of up to $25,000 are available. http://tinyurl.com/3qupbdp

My advice to communities – 1) keep asking your providers to participate in your broadband initiatives. 2) Have some quiet talks with your providers about their plans for your community. 3) Identify priority improvements that you need in your community to meet specific customer requirements and community goals.

My advice to providers – 1) Show up when invited because relationships matter; communities would rather have the local technician who knows the issues and the community than either an empty chair or someone from management who they will never see again. 2) Develop a thick skin. 3) Minimize the use of “proprietary”. In most rural markets, there is no competitor to hide information from. Lacking evidence to the contrary, communities assume that no announced plans for improvements mean no planned improvements. 4) Participate in digital inclusion initiatives that build your customer base and enhance the community’s future.

First published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews…

I had the opportunity to briefly participate in the National Rural Assembly in St. Paul this week. I wish that I could have stayed longer.

It was interesting to hear the perspective of people from around the country. It was obvious that broadband availability in many rural parts of Minnesota is far superior to that of other states. We are lucky that we have the smaller independent telephone companies who have used the available federal programs and support mechanisms to build significant FTTH and FTTP networks in their communities and surrounding hinterlands.

Over the years, I have approached broadband as an economic development challenge, especially for rural communities. I have worked with community leaders to ensure broadband for business, education, health care and the general citizenry. I have recognized that broadband is critical for all people and promoted public access sites as a way to ensure widespread community access. I saw the need to focus on creating a business case to provide services in underserved areas as the primary focus of my work. The leadership groups with which I have worked have included the traditional community leadership circle – city officials, chamber of commerce, school superintendents, business, etc.

The attendees at the National Rural Assembly seemed to share a different perspective of ensuring broadband access, especially affordable access, as a social justice issue. Their leadership is centered on non-profits, advocacy groups, low-income residents and people of color. I plan to work to bring these often separate groups together around the broadband issue recognizing their shared end-goals – better and more affordable broadband that will enable rural people and their communities to thrive.

Bill Coleman helps communities make the connection between telecommunications and economic development. As principal in Community Technology Advisors http://tinyurl.com/3f4dx7g for ten years, he assists community, foundation and corporate clients develop and implement programs of broadband infrastructure investment and technology promotion and training. Bill is working with the Blandin Foundation on the MIRC Initiative http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4, Community Broadband Resource Program http://tinyurl.com/cseu7e and other broadband projects

Published in Blandin Foundation’s eNews…

Last week I attended the Intelligent Community Conference in New York. I wanted to share a few of the highlights that caught my attention, especially in terms of what is happening with the Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) initiative http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4:

• Eindhoven was named Intelligent Community of the Year and deservedly so. Data driven, persistent with a strong sense of community. Plus very cool sense of design applied to everything.
• Eindhoven is very much into innovation and a concept that is called “open innovation.” They encourage people to share information so that the benefits can be shared. I was happy to think that our internal MIRC Ning and the Blandin Broadband Online Toolkits http://tinyurl.com/3mwyf4y are examples of open innovation.
• Leadership is so critically important. Our MIRC project coordinators are hard workers; some may even be leaders. The hard work of staff is multiplied when elected and appointed officials advocate for and promote innovation and collaboration. Spending time cultivating the engagement of your local leaders for broadband-based economic development thinking may produce some great benefits.
• People from around the world, especially Canada, are very interested in the type of work that we are doing here in Minnesota with the MIRC project.

The following was publilshed in the Blandin Broadband eNews…

Coleman’s Corner

The Connect Minnesota maps and reports http://connectmn.org/ are opening the eyes of many across the state, especially those at the bottom of the connectivity lists. Some of those counties may be on the way to solving their problems through stimulus funds – Cook, Lac qui Parle and Lake. Others are just beginning the task to ensure countywide compliance with the 10-20 Mb state broadband goal. (A side note: for a while, I was defaulting to the lower speed, but now I am promoting 15 Mb by 2015 as the goal).

Sibley County has completed a countywide fiber to the premise feasibility study. I am working on initial assessments and discussions with Redwood and Kanabec Counties. Todd County is also in on the pursuit of quality broadband, in their case, reportedly at the urging of the county cattleman’s association. Even cows want fiber, I guess!

Just as the recent MN Rural Partners report http://wp.me/p3if7-1dk indicates that the metro has significant interdependence with greater Minnesota, rural community leaders are recognizing that it is not enough for county seat cities to be well-connected. Last week at a community meeting in Mora, county seat of Kanabec County, the banker, the hospital and the schools all indicated the need to connect to consumers in the outlying areas. The hospital representative told of the need for quality broadband in rural areas so that prospective physicians can enjoy a full range of housing choices when comparing Mora to other rural locations, all of which are trying to attract new doctors.

We have had great representation from area telecommunications companies, large and small, in both Redwood and Kanabec County meetings. There is a shared understanding by all that strictly private market forces cannot finance new rural telecommunications networks. High costs, low revenues and short investment horizons combine as a triple whammy. Absent new federal broadband stimulus funds, it will be up to these rural counties to identify and implement models that work!

Bill Coleman helps communities make the connection between telecommunications and economic development. As principal in Community Technology Advisors http://tinyurl.com/3f4dx7g for ten years, he assists community, foundation and corporate clients develop and implement programs of broadband infrastructure investment and technology promotion and training. Bill is working with the Blandin Foundation on the MIRC Initiative http://tinyurl.com/2c6mhh4, Community Broadband Resource Programhttp://tinyurl.com/cseu7e and other broadband projects.