Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

Dang, if you took everything we heard (from lobbyists who must make somewhere north of $2 million a year in collective salaries to attend meetings like ours), everything's fine!  No need to do anything.  In fact, that's what one of our members said after listening to their pitches.

Argh.  Sorry gang, I didn't get a chance to ask many of your questions because the lobbyists ran out the clock and filled up the time with happy talk.

And they brought in their pet economist Scott Wallsten (http://www.wallsten.net/) to seal the deal.

Ann Treacy has a great summary to the meeting, including links to all the presentations.  Pay special attention to Wallsten's pitch, it's the last one in Ann's post.  Click HERE for summary of the meeting.

My first reaction was anger.  But when I'm angry I try to look beyond that anger to figure out what's really going on.  On reflection I realize that my real reaction is fear.  I'm afraid of the firepower those providers can bring to bear on us.  I'm afraid because we consumers have so few resources to effectively counter their arguments.

Here's my economic theory response (tongue in cheek, a little bit).  My contention is that in 10-15 years there will be one info-pipe into each house/business.  Current duopoly will continue for a while, until each location picks a market-share winner.  Soon after the clear-winner provider is picked by the market, the loser will exit the and abandon their network.  So we (the consumers who ultimately pay to build these networks) are building two networks right now, and one of them will get thrown away.  What a waste.

Here's my proposition.  We consumers should band together and exhibit a little monopoly behavior of our own.  We should look at our current providers and collectively agree on which one the winner is going to be in our area.  Then, we should all subscribe to that provider and speed up the process of driving the other one out of our market.  This would save us the cost of building that doomed-to-fail 2nd-place network.  And it would get us to the obvious monopoly more quickly, at which point we could get some effective rate, quality and access regulation in place.

[several weeks later -- I put up a little site that fleshed this out and completed my venting -- www.SwitchToWinners.com]

Let the market prevail.  (now removing my tongue from my cheek)

We're outgunned peepul.  I need some help here.

Hi all,

This is the reminder that our monthly meeting is coming up at 9:30 this Friday and you're invited.  Click HERE for a link to the announcement page -- it's got the location, agenda and like that.

The focus of the meeting this time is a series of presentations by providers.  We're going to hear from panels of telephone companies, cable companies and wireless providers plus an expert type person.

Here's where I need your help.  Post your "tough questions for providers" in the comments before 6am tomorrow (Friday) morning and I'll ask them during the meeting.  After 6am, you can still send me questions, but you'll have to email them to me because I'll be away from the web but my Blackberry will be on.

If you're attending the meeting, feel free to email me questions during the presentations and I'll try to ask your questions on the fly.  Click HERE for my email address.

The gang that's writing the history chapter is using a wiki to build up our draft.  You're welcome to watch over our shoulders and offer comments (send me email, or comment on this post -- editing the wiki is restricted to the four of us authors).  Click HERE for a link to the page we're working on.

There are a gaggle of "important reports" gathered there -- and I'm on the hunt for more.  I've already written about one such report -- the Citizen's League study in 1989.  But there are two more (as of this writing) that you might be interested in;

• The Minnesota Telefutures Study Group -- established by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in late 1990. Click HERE for the report
• Ventura Administration - On December 14, 1999, the Ventura Administration issued its Telecommunications Strategic Plan. Click HERE for the report

These are important reading for those of us who want to understand the history of this conversation and I commend them to ya.

Any more "important reports" out there that we should be looking for?

Sheesh, I'm waayy behind on posts to this blog.  So here come a flurry of them to catch up.

Here's the first one.  Darn good "call to action for a national broadband strategy" from a nice diverse group of organizations.  There's lots of astro-turf "grassroots" stuff floating around in the broadband-issue space, but this gang looks for-real to me.  Anybody got any inside scoop or insights on them?

Click HERE for their call to action

Click HERE for a list of signatories

Should I push this agenda with our task force?

Obama just mentioned broadband as a part of the "use it or lose it" portion of his economic recovery plan during his weekly radio address.  Here's the quote;

As we renew our schools and highways, we'll also renew our information super highway.  It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption.  Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online.  And they'll get that chance when I'm President because that's how we'll strengthen America's competitiveness in the world.

In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the Internet, we must alse ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet.  And that is why the economic recovery plan I'm proposing will help modernize our health care system and that won't just save jobs, it will save lives.  We will make sure that every doctor's office and hospital in this country is using cutting-edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes and help save billions of dollars each year.

Here's the whole 5 minute speech on Youtube.

I'm liking this.  A lot.  I hope our Task Force can be ready with proposals to quickly respond when he lays out the details of his plan.

1989!!

Yep, that's when folks started banging away on this topic.  Almost 20 years ago.  Argh.  Read the recommendations and weep.

Milda Hedblom chaired, and Steve Kelley contributed to, this Citizen's League study on what to do about high speed telecommunications in Minnesota.  Milda loaned me her paper copy of the report and I scanned it into a PDF file.

Click HERE for a copy of the report (about 4 mBytes).

There's some mighty ironic reading to be had here peepul.

Want to know what we're wrestling with on the task force?  Here's the whole deal in 5 minutes.  A great summary on NPR yesterday.  Click HERE for the story.

My hero Susan Crawford is one of the two people who's advising Barack Obama on the FCC -- she didn't participate in the story directly (she's on the transition team and they don't get to go out and talk to folks while they're doing that), but the reporter cuts in a clip from a recent rountable talk where she states the "broadband is a utility" position that I hold.

Listen up as the Usual Suspects give us the Current Reasons why this can't happen.  The answer?  Leadership.  That be our job.

Dang, I forgot about our December-1st deadline on this stuff so I'm submitting these to the taskforce without the benefit of your input.  But comment away, please.  I can always amend them.

We Task Force members were asked to submit our values, so that we can smash them into a pile and hopefully arrive at some consensus as a group.  Like I said, the deadline is a couple days ago, so I better push them along.  Here's my draft:

Statement of Values

-- Put consumers in the driver's seat -- broadband that is ubiquitous, symmetrical, affordable

-- Provide open access -- acknowledge the natural-monopoly of the "last mile" and provide a single high-capacity connection that can be shared by multiple providers

-- Look forward, be proactive -- prepare for our future by anticipating needs

-- Be competitive -- acknowledge the economic development advantage (and the risk of being left behind if we don't act)

--  View broadband as essential infrastructure -- rather than leaving it to be deployed only when private investors believe they can make favorable returns

-- Stimulate demand -- "building it" isn't enough, addressing the Digital Divide through access to computers and information-skills needs to be included in the mix

How did I do??