Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

I thought I'd blow the dust off this Urban Users blog and write a quick post about the new broadband coverage maps that have just been published.  In a nutshell -- they're way better this time around.  Pretty cool, as a matter of fact.  The thing I like the best is how granular they are.

Click HERE to drop right into the mapping system.

If you're an economic-development type person, or a community leader type person, these maps will help you figure out where you're at when it comes to broadband.  If you're a policy-maker type person, the maps will show you where we've still got a lot of work to do (and if you're an ISP type person that same map will show you where to put some facilities).

Darn nifty.

Sorry about the tardy post.  The week kinda got away from me.  But today is our last meeting and I expect it to be a short one.  We've got a really-close final draft to review and the only thing I found were nits.  We've bashed through to consensus on all the hard sections, now we're reviewing summaries, introduction, etc.

Fingers crossed, we'll be heading into announcement/rollout/press-release/joint-legislative-hearing a week from today in downtown St Paul.  Nearing the end of the trail.

Hmmm.  Click HERE for the list of applicants for mapping money from the NTIA.  Notice anything interesting?  Looks like Connected Nations isn't the only possible solution for coming up with state-level mapping of broadband availability.  Remember my "cranky" post?  Where the University of Minnesota got stiffed by the Pawlenty administration because they "couldn't assure the providers of confidentiality"?   Well, it sure looks like lots of other states figured that equation differently.

And gosh all fishhooks.  The NTIA has just released the first 4 grants for mapping money to non-Connected-Nations states.  The story behind that link says that the reason that the NTIA favored those applications was this;

According to the NTIA, these states’ applications stood out from the rest because they plan to get data from sources other than the usual suspects (incumbent telecom and cable operators), verify the data they collect, and collaborate with other state agencies.

Y'know...  If they'd asked us Task Force folks (instead of just handing the deal to Connected Nations), we could have told the state bureaucrats that.  Maybe we've moved from the front of the line to the back of the line?   Clever us.

I remembered to bring the dang MP3 recorder with me this time, so here are the recordings of the meeting yesterday

Click HERE for the recording of the morning meeting

• 0:04  Ongoing Counctil
• 1:04  Ubiquitous Broadband
• 1:26  Break
• 1:40  Security
• 2:05  Economic Development
• 2:39  Benefits to Organizations and Institutions

Click HERE for the recording of the afternoon meeting (I had to scoot, so the last 10 minutes of the meeting wasn't recorded)

• 0:01  Security
• 0:55  Connected Nations
• 1:07  Report-drafting details

It's getting to be crunch time as we wind down to the final report.  We're on an every-two-week schedule now and things are feeling a little pressured as we finally get to the point where we have to face and resolve some fundamental questions.  The one that's likely to dominate the meeting tomorrow is the question "what is this here Council you're proposing actually going to do?"  Opinions vary (to commit violent understatement).  A lot of us want to make sure that this report doesn't just become Report Number Nine (number nine, number nine, number nine...) on the pile of reports gathering dust and the key to that is FOLLOW THROUGH by all us stakeholders.  To do that, we need a mechanism to stay focused, come together, figure out Right Action, and keep things moving.  We'll see how it goes...

Click HERE for the info and agenda for the meeting tomorrow.  I'm on deck for three agenda items in a row in the morning.  I'm probably going to need a beer by lunch time. 

Hi all.  Another reminder post -- our next meeting is this Friday.  And this time there's an additional feature -- an informal reception the night before.  This carries over a habit we got into when we were on the road this summer.  So click HERE to read the agenda and get the meeting materials, and click HERE to learn more about the reception the night before.  Heck, I like the topic of "beer" so much, here are the Beer details directly so you don't have to lift a finger;

Informal Reception with the Task Force at the Starks Saloon at 6:30 pm on Thursday, September 17

• Starks Saloon http://www.starks-saloon.com/ in Eagan.  Address:  3125 Dodd Rd Eagan, MN 55121-2308.  Phone:  651-454-8251
• Directions: From 35E, exit Lone Oak Road, go east to Hwy 55 (1 mile).  Right on Hwy 55 to first right at Dodd Road/149 (1/4 mile), Starks is on the right.  From 494, exit at Dodd Road. Road exit (1/2 mile east of 35E on 494). Turn Left at Light.  Go south 1/2 mile to Hwy 55, turn left at light, go to second light at Dodd Road/149 (1/2 mile).  Starks is on the right., ,,

Thanks to Diane Wells!  Here's the 1985 report from the Minnesota Telecommunications Council regarding advanced telecommunications in the state.  Key recommendations?

• Economic development is key
• There are regulatory issues that need to be addressed
• There are exciting possibilities for use by the public sector
• Follow-through is required (the report recommended the State Planning Agency as the home)

Click HERE to read this report.  Report number 8 on the pile of "reports that precede us."

A great set of proposals from Minnesota!  $283m in grants plus $105m in loans.  I guess there's some unmet need in this state after all. 

But the total amount applied for was around $28 billion, so our $388 million represents about 1.4% of the total and falls short of 2% of the total (assuming equal money per state) or 1.8% of the total (measuring Minnesota's population as a proportion of the US total).  So we're not quite above-average yet peepul.

Click HERE for a "canned" search of the NTIA applications database that was just released -- this search shows all the apps from Minnesota and is where I got that "headline" number.

Click HERE for the page where you can formulate your own search.

I decided to fire up another little blog today -- now that i think that I'm a BTOP grant reviewer for the NTIA.  It's a little hard to tell at this point.  I know I'm approved-enough to get to attend a webinar today.  But the proof of the pudding will be whether I get assigned to actually review any grant applications.  Here's the place to Stay Tuned if you're interested.

www.BtopReviewer.com

Any other reviewers out there?  I'd love to hear from you!

This one slipped by for me.  'Course, why should I know about this -- I'm only on the State's broadband Task Force and Connected Nations was only supposed to be on our agenda before the decision was made, but hey...

Click HERE to read the letter from the commissioners of DEED and Commerce to the Governor that recommends Connected Nations as the outfit to develop Minnesota's application for the Federal "State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program" funds that are out there under the stimulus program.  The Governor signed off and CN is off to the races.

I'm pretty cranky about this process.  Nice n'cozy.  Nice n'closed.  Nice bypass of the Task Force.  No public input at all as far as I can see.  Looks like there was lots of opportunity for providers to provide input about their confidentiality needs, not too much input about what consumers need.  Look forward to more sub-par optimistic maps, and impossible to use/verify data, peepul.

Like I said, I'm cranky today.  I think it would be useful if a few million consumers showed up at the next Task Force meeting and let us know what they think of this decision and the process that arrived at it.  It would also probably be useful if a few more million consumers wrote to the Feds asking them not to fund our application.  I would prefer to have no Federal money wasted on these maps here in Minnesota after seeing what we got for the state money we spent on the last round.  The stuff we got is actually worse than useless because the maps are full of happy talk about how great the coverage is here in the state -- if you like a 756k  definition for "broadband".  Now we're signed up for more of the same, but it's coming out of our Federal taxes rather than our State taxes.

Connected Nations is supposed to be on the agenda this next time (just like the last two meetings, but I'm not promising anything), so there's a good reason for you to do a little research, come to the meeting and express your opinions during the public comment period.

Other things you could do;

• Email to the Governor (tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us) and the commissioners (dan.mcelroy@state.mn.us and glenn.wilson@state.mn.us)
• Let them know that you saw this post and that you're cranky too
• Demand that their be some kind of public process in which stakeholders provide review and oversight of Connected Nations while they're writing the grant application
• Demand the same public/transparent process be put in place when Connected Nations is actually doing the work
• Demand more granular data, that is available to the public in a downloadable dataset and is independently verifiable (see my previous post for a little more detail)
• Demand a consumer voice in the framing of the nature of the work to be done, dang nabbit!