Project 1 -- History Chapter -- Dianne, JoAnne, Brent and Mike
From Mike's working wiki
Chapter 1 -- How did we get here?
Sections
Contents |
Introduction
This chapter tries to answer the question "Where have we been?" when it comes to broadband in the state of Minnesota. Quoting the words of George Santayana, who wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" we believe that it's very important to understand the technology and initiatives that have preceded our work as a Task Force.
Minnesota was once at the center of the computer industry. Control Data, Sperry, Univac, Honeywell and others had their headquarters in the state and formed the core of a vibrant technology community that was eventually eclipsed by the arrival of ever-smaller computers and the arrival of the Internet. While Minnesota is now in the middle of the pack when it comes to most aspects of information technology, the state was an early leader in developing Internet-based applications such as Gopher and POP-3 email protocol. Understanding this technical and business history may help frame the discussion as we look forward to the future of the state in the (now) worldwide information society.
We have also collected a number of reports produced by predecessors to this task force. The question "what should we do about broadband in Minnesota?" has been asked and answered a number of times before and we have tried to summarize all of those reports in this chapter. Again, the results are mixed. The state was early into the discussion (the first major broadband report was issued by the Minnesota Citizens League in 1989), but subsequent policy-actions and results do not appear to have had major impact. Several themes are repeated in most of the reports we reviewed.
Several themes are repeated in most of the reports we reviewed.
- Planning -- address the lack of a widely-accepted broadband plan
- Collaboration -- reduce the silo mentality and behavior of stakeholders
- Leadership -- support leaders in the community, legislature and administration to advance the work
Conditions today are not materially different from when these reports were written. We intend this history to enable the Task Force to address these issues in a way that does not consign this report to the same dusty shelves that we found these reports on. This chapter has been organized into five sections:
1. State Milestones,
2. Technology Catalysts,
3. National Drivers,
4. In-State Broadband Initiatives, and
5. Municipal Broadband Initiatives.
Each section will chronologically document events that have taken place at the state and national levels. These events were taken into consideration by the Task Force in the preparation of this report.
State milestones
- 1988 MRNet formed as an academic/commercial collaborative statewide service -- MRNet was originally formed in 1988 as an unincorporated association during the early NSFNet days. However, Minnesota was distinctive in that most state and regional networks were based an major Universities. Here, though the UofM was a key participant, the organization was a collaboration of higher ed (UofM, MSUS and 10 private colleges) and major technology businesses (3M, Cray, Control Data, Honeywell, Unisys et. al.). This made it much easier for statewide networking involving a variety of organizations (Higher Ed, K12, city/county/state govt, business, independent ISPs) to grow. MRNet’s structure as a nonprofit gave it easier entry to partner with UofM and MSUS to create a joint state network. It gave businesses a legal vehicle to obtain Internet access because MRNet was not a part of the University as in other states. When the commercial Internet began growing in 1993 and 1994, MRNet was easily able to accommodate that without difficulty.
- 1988 First Internet service to the state -- Connection via 56K point to point line to the NSFNet Backbone hub at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- 1989 -- First NSF funding for higher ed connectivity. Much of the Higher Eds got connectivity early funded from grants from NSF with MRNet as the sponsoring organization. Nearly $1 million in Federal funds was brought into the state over the 1989-1994 period to build Internet infrastructure and access in metro and rural areas. This included funds to connect 10 private colleges, funds for MRNet to expand staff and outstate hubs in St Cloud, Rochester and Moorhead, funds for the multi-state Rural Datafication project which enabled additional outstate dialup hubs in Northfield, Two Harbors/Silver Bay, Grand Marais, Detroit Lakes, International Falls, Lake City and Faribault in 1994.
- 1990 Roles of the University and MSUS and their networks -- MRNet was able to build up a statwide network connecting many outstate educational orgs because of the combined infrastructure of UofM lines to UMD and Rochester and MSUS lines to Mankato, St Cloud, Moorhead and Bemidji. Primary beneficiaries were the State Universities and private colleges. A few outstate ISPs also hooked in at the remote hub sites.
- 1991 -- MRNet connection to the Internet backbone upgraded to a T1 connection to the NSFNet Backbone hub at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- 1992 -- Launched joint MRNET/UofM connection to CICNet Chicago via multi-T1 1992-1995
- 1993 -- The first statewide dialup service, InforMNs (Internet for Minnesota Schools) was deployed. This provided a single dialup account for each school building in the state. The project was a partnership among MRNet, TIES and the Minnesota Dept of Education with $400,000/year funding from the Legislature, their first Internet funding initiative. This dialup system was distinctive in that it was a comprehensive project providing access, well-written instructional documentation and training for people in each school building to use the service. This was nationally unique.
- 1994 -- Arrival of independent ISPs. In 1994, the first independent ISPs popped into existence, using the low cost and ubiquitous presence of MRNet’s infrastructure. This infrastructure provided a core around which many independent ISPs were able to quickly form across the state with a neutral core operator to give them national access. This lowered the expense for many areas around the state since it was expensive to bring the national carriers’ access outside the Twin Cities.
- 1995 -- Launched joint MRNet/UofM connection to MCI Chicago via 45Mb DS3 1995
- 1995 -- Growth of the commercial Internet - the transition from R&D to commercial use (NSF NAP/RA/vBNS solicitation et al). The NSFNet research and eduation backbone was finally shut down in April 25 1995. All the regional networks had switched to a handful of national commercial backbones which peered with each other at specific interchange sites for interconnectivity. Many of the regional networks formed commercial operations. Because of MRNet’s independence, this was easy to do in 1995 as commercial access exploded in 1994-1996.
- 1994 -- Independent Telco entry into rural Internet. In 1994 and 1995, MEANS Telcom and its membership of independent phone companies initiated a statewide Internet initiative that consisted of a MEANS-built frame relay network. This provided a wide area of access in the northern and western rural areas of the state to the vast majority of small towns.
- 1998 -- MNET initiated. In the late ‘90s, the state government started building a statewide backbone to provide access to remote agency offices and city/county governments. MNET rapidly extended access to the public sector all over the state.
- 1996 -- Independent ISPs (Visi and gofast.net) add non-MRNet DS3 connections to national backbone networks
- 1997 -- gofast.net (local ISP) and Continental Cablevision (Roseville) collaborate on first Internet access delivered over cable in the state. This was a hybrid network in which downstream access was delivered over cable and upstream was delivered over ISDN.
- 1997 -- gofast.net (local ISP) delivers first wireless Internet access. This was a hybrid network in which downstream access was delivered over microwave (in the ITFS band) from an antenna on the IDS building and upstream was delivered over ISDN.
- 1998 -- Local ISPs Visi and gofast.net deliver first DSL Internet access. Using raw-copper pairs from the telco, gofast.net delivered 5 mBit/second symmetrical DSL in downtown St Paul for $40/month.
Technology catalysts
- 1990 -- IBM introduced the RS/6000 AIX-based workstation in 1990. This was a Unix-based system designed for business departmental use. What this system did was to legitimize the Unix workstation in business environments, since it came from IBM, the trusted name in business computing. Businesses starting buying them and giving them to their IT departments to figure them out. It was perceived they would have a significant role in the businesses data processing regime. The IT staff went looking for Unix information and found that it was all on the Internet, which was based on Unix. Therefore, outfits like IDS, and others (non-technology companies) started connecting to the Internet in significant numbers increasing its growth.
- 1990 -- The Gopher protocol and original Gopher viewer application were first developed at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990’s as part of the drive to make use of the Internet to enable the simple sharing of documents with people who could be located in institutions on opposite sides of the country or even the world, and to have those documents organized so that similar / related pages would be easily accessible. The value of the Gopher system was enhanced by the development of two systems known as Veronica and Jughead which allowed a user to search across resources stored in Gopher file hierarchies on a global basis. As for the naming of the system, the University of Minnesota sports teams were called the ‘Golden Gophers’ and the sports mascot was thus a large gopher, it has been said that the protocol was named in honor of the mascot, and also as in an assistant who's sent to ‘go for’ things.
- 1993 -- First release of the Mosaic browser for the World Wide Web protocol.
- 1993 -- US West launches a statewide frame relay service. This eventually was priced on a distance-insensitive uniform basis statewide. This enabled many outstate organizations to be connected to the MRNet outstate hubs in Moorhead, St Cloud, Duluth, Rochester at prices comparable to those in the Twin Cities. Many organizations took advantage of this and MRNet alone, at one point, represented 2% of US West’s entire 14 state frame relay service capacity.
National drivers
- 1986 -- NSFNET went online in 1986 and connected the supercomputer centers at 56,000 bits per second—the speed of a typical computer modem today. In a short time, the network became congested and, by 1988, its links were upgraded to 1.5 megabits per second. A variety of regional research and education networks, supported in part by NSF, were connected to the NSFNET backbone, thus extending the Internet’s reach throughout the United States.
- 1993 -- NSF begins transition to commercial providers. Commercial firms noted the popularity and effectiveness of the growing Internet and built their own networks. The proliferation of private suppliers led to an NSF solicitation in 1993 that outlined a new Internet architecture that largely remains in place today. From that solicitation, NSF awarded contracts in 1995 for three network access points, to provide connections between commercial networks, and one routing arbiter, to ensure an orderly exchange of traffic across the Internet. In addition, NSF signed a cooperative agreement to establish the next-generation very-high-performance Backbone Network Service. A more prominent milestone was the decommissioning of the NSFNET backbone in April 1995. In the years following NSFNET, NSF helped navigate the road to a self-governing and commercially viable Internet during a period of remarkable growth. The most visible, and most contentious, component of the Internet transition was the registration of domain names. Domain name registration associates a human-readable character string (such as "nsf.gov") with Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which computers use to locate one another
- 1996 -- Telecommunications Act of 1996 opens up the landscape for the growth of CLECs and competitive providers
- 1999 -- Major telco and cable entry into Internet service (AT&T, Sprint, MCI, Baby Bells, Cox, Time Warner et al)
- 2003 -- FCC ruling exempting the Telcos from the requirement to share broadband network elements
In-State Broadband Initiatives
- 1989 -- Citizen's League Report: "Wiring Minnesota: New State Goals for Telecommunications" Click HERE for the report
The report recognized the importance of being able to access and share information to economic development, education, healthcare, and government. The report encouraged the state to set a goal for adopting an advanced, broadband network throughout the state by 2005, set up a joint legislative commission to coordinate activities within state government, and instruct executive branch agencies on how to achieve state telecommunications goals. The report also set goals for the Public Utilities Commission to evaulate proposals from telephone companies on upgrades to their networks, to allow companies to earn higher rates of return on investments that carry more risk, adopt new depreciation standards to major equipment items to match up with technological lives and to set standards for switching equipment and other facilities to stimulate investment.
- 1990 -- The Minnesota Telefutures Study Group -- established by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Click HERE for the report, click HERE for the PUC order that resulted from that report.
The Study Group reported back to the PUC on November 19, 1993 with short term, intermediate and long term recommendations. The PUC adopted the short term recommendations of eliminating two-party service, to submit a plan to offer full digital switching and full digital interoffice facilities by 1/1/98, to provide all customers with touchtone with no separate charge, to require all providers to offer first generation custom calling services, and to move up the deadline by which interLATA equal access must be offered. Intermediate goals adopted included requiring ubiquitous SS7 trunk signalling for call set up and to file plans for SS7 deployment or request an extension. The PUC also directed the telephone companies to provide their customers with information on ISDN features and availability. With regard to the long term issues, the PUC determined that ISDN deployment and the wireless communications infrastructure development and deployment should be left to market demand. With regard to broadband deployment, the PUC declined to make a determination on any of the scenarios presented by the Study Group (build it and they will come, market demand/deployment or industry/public joint action. Instead the PUC solicited comments on how it could establish a tracking mechanism for broadband to track the advancement of the infrastruction. However, the PUC never acted to implement a tracking mechanism, probably because it had no regulatory oversight over many of the broadband infrastructure providers.
- 1993 -- LNM, TAG, TARP, and RLTA Click HERE for a brief history
The Learning Network of Minnesota (LNM) was established in 1993 by the Minnesota Legislature to provide a statewide, high-speed telecommunications highway designed to enable higher education institutions to provide courses through distance learning. In 1995, the LNM was expanded to establish links to connect K-12 public schools and public libraries with the existing higher education network. Using high-speed telecommunications lines, the LNM collaboration provides access and delivery of information resources to students and public library customers such as: • Internet access; • Distance learning opportunities to learners through the use of interactive television (ITV) and on-line learning technology; • A transport system for the state to send and receive data electronically from K-12 schools and public libraries, and; • Access to MnLINK, the Minnesota Library Information Network.
In 1995, the expansion of the higher education telecommunications network to include links for K-123 schools and public libraries was supported by initial appropriations totaling $15.5 million in noncompetitive telecommunications access grants for FY1996-FY1997 biennium. These appropriations were intended to bring telecommunications access to the “door” of the school district or regional public library system. The school districts and public libraries were then expected to provide the local area networks needed to link individual buildings and connect to the Learning Network of Minnesota.
The resulting Telecommunications Access Grant (TAG) program for K-12 schools and public libraries included a requirement that school districts and public libraries apply in groups of at least ten school districts in order to be eligible to receive funding. In order to provide for improved coordination of funding distribution, delivery of services, and economies of scale available through cooperative purchasing, school districts and public libraries voluntarily organized themselves into eight telecommunications access clusters or regions, throughout the state.
The TAG program was continued with funding appropriated for the FY1998-FY1999 biennium. In FY2000, the Legislature declined to continue funding the ongoing costs of telecommunications access for schools through the TAG program. A limited amount of TAG funding was provided in FY2000 to purchase equipment for sites that had not previously connected to the Learning Network of Minnesota, but no further funding for recurring telecommunications access costs was provided for schools. Public Libraries were provided with ongoing telecommunications funding through the newly established Regional Library Telecommunications Aid (RLTA) program.
- 1995 Shared Vision for Minnesota. Click HERE for the report.
In 1995, a report of outcomes from the "Telecommunications for Rural Minnesota" was released after the conference held in St. Cloud in June of that year. The participants represented business, communities, education, healthcare, non-profits and telecommunications providers. They identified the following problems: a lack of focused, informed leadership; access to telecommunications resources; and lack of knowledge and understanding about telecommunications, information resources and the implications in our lives. They went on to identify the following solutions: gaining knowledge and understanding to make informed decisions at all levels; leadership to champion the vision; and access should be universal and affordable to all communities and citizens.
This was a time when there were still a few parts of the state that had trouble faxing documents as well as no access to a local number for Interenet connections. About 75% of the state had dial up Internet connection availability. The participants determined that regulatory barriers and market based resource provision created inequities, particularly in areas of the state where telecommunications could do the most to improve healthcare, education and commerce opportunities.
- 1999 -- The Ventura Administration issues its Telecommunications Strategic Plan. Click HERE for the report
This plan was compiled by four state agencies: Minnesota Planning, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Administration and the Department of Trade and Economic Development. The work team provided a comprehensive set of maps updating information on the status of the infrastructure in Minnesota. The plan also included a complete overhaul of all telecommunications and cable television statutes. While it generated much debate, over three legislative sessions (2000, 2001 and 2002) the proposal was to contentious to generate support.
- 2000 -- Regional Library Telecommunications Aid (RLTA) program launched. Funding for this program was also provided in FY2001, which included a base amount and a one-time increase for the purchase and installation of equipment for upgrading lines. Funding for FY2002 was for the base amount to cover telecommunications line lease and maintenance only.
- 2001 -- The Legislature provides funding for school district and public library telecommunications access through separate funding streams.
For school districts, funding was appropriated for ongoing telecommunications access and maintenance through a $5 adjusted marginal cost per pupil (AMCPU) increase in operating capital revenue, and a supplemental entitlement program known as Telecommunications Access Revenue Program (TARP). Any district whose ongoing telecommunications costs associated with line leases, interactive television, Internet access, and ongoing wide area network maintenance exceeded the additional $5 per AMCPU in operating capital revenue could submit projected costs to CFL for up to on 1.544 Mbs data or video link per elementary, middle, and secondary school. School districts could also claim costs associated with cooperative agreements relating to delivery of telecommunications access. The $5 per AMCPU in operating capital revenue and the supplemental TARP program were also provided to school districts in FY2002.
- 2001 -- Center for Rural Policy and Development launches their Annual Telecommunications Survey Click HERE for copies of their reports.
Since 2001, the Center has conducted an annual survey of Greater Minnesota to look at the adoption of computer and Internet technology. Beginning in 2005, the survey was expanded to include the seven county Twin Cities metropolitan area. The reports can be found at the Center's website at www.ruralmn.org. Some broad statements that can be made from the survey results include: if you don't have a computer, you likely won't be connected to the Internet as computers are the primary method of connecting today; if you didn't have a computer in 2008 you likely won't have one in 2009; and the gap in Internet connection between rural Minnesota and the Twin Cities metropolitan area exists but it is shrinking. (There will continue to be a gap because the rural homes are less likely to have a computer/Internet connection due to a higher percentage of the population age 65 and older, fewer school age children, a lower income level, and availabilty of broadband service.) The survey also found that early on, those with broadband and those with dial-up connections used the Internet for similar purposes. However, that has changed. Today, subscribers wtih a broadband connection are much more likely to work from home, download music and videos, look for employment online, take an online class or earn income in some way other than through regular employment.
- 2003 -- Blandin Foundation launches their - Broadband Initiative Click HERE for the web site
The Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative began in 2003 as the Foundation recognized that the rapid deployment and accelerated use of broadband would provide a valuable boost to economic vitality across rural Minnesota. To date, the results are as follows:
- Supported ongoing policy discussion and relationship building at the Strategy Board level, including the adoption of a Broadband Vision with supporting Principles
- Approved 39 community-driven broadband market development and implementation grants in 33 communities that positively impacted broadband adoption
- An initial $352,500 investment by Blandin Foundation has leveraged an additional grant from the state of Minnesota for $250,000 plus at least $627,300 in matching funds from the communities for total new investment in broadband capacity of over $1,229,800
- Built community leadership capacity through conferences, videoconferences and webinars, web resources and onsite technical assistance
- Stimulated, through grantmaking, investments in FTTP networks and telehealth and distance education broadband-based applications
