Urban Broadband Users in Minnesota

Dang nabbit!  We're like the gang that can't shoot straight.  We go to great lengths to get a good speed test of connections in Minnesota, so we can draw cool maps, so we can make some policy decisions about where the holes are in broadband coverage.

The report's due out soon -- so there's a big piece on MPR's site.  Click HERE for the story.  All kinds of good words and phrases.  I liked the article a lot.

The only problem?  The ding dang rippin' frippin' test may be inaccurate!!  ARGH!

Aileen Horwath (long time super-credible player in the ISP space) just wrote a devastating article on the IpHouse blog that needs checking out RIGHT NOW!  If Aileen's stuff checks out (which I'm pretty sure it will, given that Aileen has never missed in my experience) we've got us a badly flawed method on which the maps are being drawn.

Click HERE for this very important story.  And peepul...  Let's get some confirmation.  The Broadband task force is meeting to talk about these tests on Feb. 6th.  I'd like us to have some scoop before that meeting, if possible.

Here's the language in the American Recovery and Reinvestment plan as it stands today;

Broadband to Give Every Community Access to the Global Economy
• Wireless and Broadband Grants: $6 billion for broadband and wireless services in underserved areas to strengthen the economy and provide business and job opportunities in every section of America with benefits to e-commerce, education, and healthcare. For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.

Roughly $100 million per state (dividing by 50 and heroically rounding).  The devil's in the details, but we better get ready to elbow our way through the line.

Our chair (Rick King) just sent out a request to us task-force members to come up with a list of "shovel ready" broadband projects here in the state.  He's asked all of us to bring lists to the meeting this Friday and he'll put together a memo to Senator Prettner-Solon and Representative Sheldon Johnson (Chairs of the
respective Telecomm Committees) who've asked for the list.

So, if your town, community, neighborhood has projects that are all defined but lack funding, let me know RIGHT NOW so I can add them to the list.

A sub-committee of the task force reviewed a boatload of similar statewide broadband reports from other states and we're going to share our work with the committee this Friday.

I smashed all of our summaries together into a single document and realized that this summary might be useful to a broader audience.  It's interesting to look at the similarity of the reports from all those other states -- and also interesting to see the gaps.

Click HERE for a web-based version of all this, and click HERE for the whole shebang smashed together in a Word document.

There's a little duplication that I'm going to try to compress out of the next version -- but it's still pretty darn interesting to see the broad outline of what we summarized.  And it's a great source for folks who are thinking about topic sections for a similar report.

Hi gang,

This is the standard reminder that the monthly Broadband Task Force meeting is coming up this Friday.  With a new twist.  We're actually using the dang technology!  Woohoo!  I'm not sure whether we're streaming it live on the Internets, but we're making progress.

We're going to be using the State video network to support meeting-locations at six locations around the state.  Click HERE to see the agenda for Friday's meeting.  The second page shows the locations and gives driving instructions.

Tell your friends who are interested in rural broadband about those non-metro locations.  They're a lot easier for people to get to, and they're all open to the public, so come on down.

NOTE -- we're NOT meeting in the Eagan firehouse location this time.  I'm going to head over to the Metro State library location in St Paul.

Huh.  You know there's momentum when BusinessWeek picks up on something.  Here's the quote that caught my eye in their "A Broadband Stimulus Plan" article;

But there's another factor holding back job creation in communications. Remember that the auto industry had its infrastructure—highways and streets—built and maintained by the government. Consider this: In 1965, as the interstate highway building boom was winding down, government at all levels spent roughly $12 billion on highway and street construction and maintenance, paid for in large part by gas taxes and other motor vehicle fees. The total wholesale value of new cars, trucks, and buses the same year was only about $22 billion.

In all likelihood, if the automakers had been forced to bear the full cost of building the roads and highways, they would have had to charge considerably more for their vehicles. Alternatively, fewer roads and highways might have been constructed, especially in rural areas. In either case, the process of creating jobs would have proceeded much more slowly.

Unfortunately, that's the situation of the communications industry, which has to fund its own infrastructure. From that perspective, $10 billion a year in broadband is a fairly conservative investment.

Click HERE for the whole article.  Click HERE for "The Digital Road to Recovery: A Stimulus Plan to Create Jobs, Boost Productivity and Revitalize America" a report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation which lays out the job-creation economics.  Their major findings;

1. Investments in America’s digital infrastructure will spur significant job creation in the short run.

2. Investments in America’s digital infrastructure that create a network effect (or network externality) will offer superior job creation benefits because of the “network multiplier.”

3. Investments in America’s digital infrastructure will lead to higher productivity, increased competitiveness, and improved quality of life in the moderate to long term.

Neat stuff, there's LOTS more to read in that study -- another antidote to the happy-talk we heard from the providers at the last meeting.  Tip of the hat to Cory Wilson, who put me on to that article.

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.

You can click HERE to watch 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.

Wow!  Lots of people have recognized that the Obama stimulus package represents the "Eisenhower moment" for broadband deployment.  I'm REALLY interested in stuff like this (as these may be good models for what we propose) so if you come across more stuff like this, please post links in the comments.

Dave Russell sent me a bunch of great stuff, mostly centered on the CWA proposal and the endorsement of that proposal by the Fiber to the Home Council.  Here are links;

• Click HERE for a copy of CWA's letter to Congress, which also includes a list of specific actions that they recommend.  A great position -- it addresses a lot of the complicated issues in a very elegant way.  I like it a lot.
• Click HERE for very extensive write up in Broadband Properties, which supports the CWA position and fleshes out the argument.  Again, a terrific piece.
• Click HERE for a Letter from the Editor by Steve Ross, Editor of Broadband Properties
• Click HERE for an article by Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg in which he makes the economic case for ultra high speed broadband and why Verizon jumped into the game so early.
• Click HERE for an article about an economic-impact study commissioned by Connected Nation.  The headline numbers?  $134 Billion for the Economy, 2.4 Million Jobs.
• Click HERE for a PriceWaterhouseCoopers study of the environmental impact of fiber to the home deployments.  Their conclusion?  FTTH is a net positive to the environment within six years of deployment, just looking at telecommuting alone.
• Click HERE for an Empiris study (commissioned by the Fiber to the Home Council) describing the economic impacts of tax incentives for broadband infrastructure deployment.  A great study that reviews a number of proposals we may want to discuss at the Minnesota level.
• Click HERE for the December 16 letter that the Fiber to the Home Council sent to Congress, endorsing the CWA position.
• Click HERE for the December 18 National Telecommunications Cooperative Association position paper.  Here's a quote that caught my eye -- "We believe industry responsibilities accompany the opportunity to transition to a competitive deregulatory operating environment.  These obligations include fully embracing our national universal service policy, adequately compensating others for the use of their facilities and negotiating interconnection and access matters in good faith."

Whew!  Way to go Dave!  Lots and lots of stuff to think about in those articles -- I'm feeling like those are the antidotes to all the happy-talk baloney that so bummed me out at the last meeting.

Anybody else got stuff like this?  There's a LOT of activity right now, since people are trying to get stuff into the stimulus bill that Obama wants to sign right after he gets into office.  So post links in the comments.  Here's one to start you off.  Dennis Fazio sent me this one;

• Click HERE to read a piece by Tom Evslin (formerly of AT&T Worldnet and Microsoft) titled "Why Government Investment in Broadband is Justified Now"
• Click HERE for Tom's take on why the Federal Broadband money should go to states rather than directly to providers.  I like this idea, for many of the reasons he states in the article -- accountability, buy-in, skin in the game, etc.

Thanks Dennis!  Anybody got more of these gems??  Post 'em in the comments.