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!