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.
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;
Here are recordings of our meeting on August 21st;
Click HERE for section 1 (120 mBytes)
00:00 - Housekeeping
00:20 - Public Comments
01:20 - Recommendation 1 - Speed & Symmetrical Service
Click HERE for section 2 (65 mBytes)
00:00 - Recommendation 1 - Speed
00:03 - Recommendation 2 - Ubiquitous Broadband (goal approved, follow through mechanism not approved)
Click HERE for section 3 (100 mBytes)
00:03 - Meeting starts
00:04 - Recommendation 1 - Speed (approved)
00:17 - Role of government
01:18 - Recommendation 3 - Opportunities for collaboration (approved)
01:21 - Recommendation 4 - Cost
01:44 - Wrap-up
Life got A Little Complicated so I'm a little late posting this reminder of the Broadband Taskforce meeting tomorrow. But now I've settled into my room in Fergus Falls and have a couple hours to catch up before attending the Blandin meeting this afternoon.
Click HERE for a link to the agenda for our meeting this month.
We're heading into the intense report-writing phase of our work -- effectively we only have about 2 months left to go before our report is finished. So we're pretty much out of the "gather new facts" phase and into the "get our thoughts on paper" phase of this year and a half long effort. I think we're getting there, but the next few meetings are likely to be pretty lively. If you can't make this one, consider putting the next one on your calendar.
