Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

Paul Krugman just wrote a column (click HERE to read it) in which he says;

I don’t expect another Great Depression … [but] We are … well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

To see what I’m talking about, consider the implications of the latest piece of terrible economic news: Thursday’s report on new claims for unemployment insurance, which have now passed the half-million mark. Bad as this report was, viewed in isolation it might not seem catastrophic. After all, it was in the same ballpark as numbers reached during the 2001 recession and the 1990-1991 recession, both of which ended up being relatively mild by historical standards (although in each case it took a long time before the job market recovered).

But on both of these earlier occasions the standard policy response to a weak economy — a cut in the federal funds rate, the interest rate most directly affected by Fed policy — was still available. Today, it isn’t: the effective federal funds rate (as opposed to the official target, which for technical reasons has become meaningless) has averaged less than 0.3 percent in recent days. Basically, there’s nothing left to cut.

He goes on to make the case that the only place left to go is massive Federal spending to stimulate the economy, much like we saw in the early 1930’s with Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Krugman is thinking on the order of $600 billion.  Obama has already indicated that such stimulus spending is probably in the cards, and that he wants to focus on infrastructure.

I think we ought to be making the case that some of that infrastructure-stimulus spending ought to be aimed at broadband infrastructure.  Since this train is likely to be leaving the station in the first few months of 2009 as the new administration gets under way, I think that we (the Broadband Task Force) ought to be formulating some kind of position quickly.

What say you?

Hi all,

Just a quick note to remind you that our October meeting is coming up this Friday — October 24th.  We’re meeting at the Eagan Fire Administration/Station # 6.  Here are the details;

Address — 3795 Pilot Knob Road, Eagan, MN 55122  (right at the corner of Pilot Knob Road and Wescott Road)

Phone number of the fire station, if you get lost and need directions — (651) 675-5900

There’s free parking, and handicapped parking, in the lot surrounding the fire station.

The EU has just published a pretty darn nifty approach to the Internet that we might want to emulate in Minnesota.

CLICK HERE to read their vision of the future of the Internet

CLICK HERE to read a short summary article

The punchline for me?

An open Internet relies on an open market that allows innovation, but at the same time sufficiently regulated to prevent incumbents to outplay newcomers.

Click here to read the post.

Here’s the punchline graph;

See the US???  Way down there on the bottom???

The gist of the bill is to get better dang data.  Click HERE to read the bill.

The headline says it all.

Here’s the story;

http://www.circleid.com/posts/wholesale_internet_bandwidth_prices

and here’s the punchline graph…

/

Sheesh.

Bill Coleman just sent me this link called “Advice for the Broadband Task Force.”  Great stuff and worth the six minutes it takes to run.  I just watched it while on vacation here in New Brunswick.  The rain of hurricane Kyle is drumming on the roof of my RV.  Marcie just put her rain gear on and took a walk, saying “hey, I’ve never been in a hurricane before.”  Today I’m a rural broadband user too.  The Blackberry that’s tethered to my computer is doing an ok job, but I couldn’t upload a 60k file attached to email earlier today — so Bell Canada’s got a ways to go.

Bill’s put together a great video.  Enjoy — and let me know what you think in the comments.  Do rural users have the same issues that you urban users do?  Perhaps we’re all rural users (like I am now) sometimes?

What a silly thing.  Much as we’d like to use the Internet to do our work as a task force, we probably won’t.  Why?  Because it appears that the Minnesota open meeting law prohibits us from using most of the capability of the Internet (email, chat, forums, instant messaging, etc. etc. etc.) to talk amongst ourselves (and you).

The law is designed to prohibit secret meetings.  The interpretation we’re getting is that using Internet tools between meetings is, in essence, a continuous ongoing secret meeting.  Wait a few weeks and then check out the tortured language that will show up on our official website.   You can talk to each other, you can talk to us, one of us can respond to you, but we can’t respond to each other.

It’s outside our charter to get this fixed.  But it needs fixing.  Meanwhile, it’s quite quaint.  I feel like I’m back in the 50’s again.

The task force is starting to get under way.  Our next 3 meetings are devoted to getting edumacated.  So here’s a thread for you to post links to articles along those lines.

Here’s one I just came across on Digg, to get you started — The 50 most significant moments of Internet history

The comments have a bunch of other things that the author missed.  I’m an infrastructure geek, so I’m not quite as interested in the application stuff that this article describes.  But it covered a lot of ground nonetheless.

So what are your favorite links that describe;

• Where have we been?
• Where are we now?
• Where we are going?

Post ‘em in the comments peepul.

Huh.  We’re not meeting at Thomson/Reuters this Friday — note the new location;

Friday, September 19th, 2008
9:30 am to 3:00 pm
State Office Building
Room #5
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Saint Paul, MN 55155

Please note that you will all be responsible to pay for parking and purchase your own beverages and lunch while attending the meeting.  Lunch and beverages can be purchased in the Transportation building right next door, or feel free to bring your own.