Keep Rural Broadband a Bipartisan Priority

Throughout the current Minnesota legislative session, rural broadband development has presented itself as mostly a bipartisan issue. A Republican authored bill in the House (HF593), a Democrat authored bill (SF439) in the Senate and co-authors from both sides of the aisle.

Then, HF843 arrives as an omnibus economic development bill and the Office of Broadband Development (OBD) and Border to Border (B2B) grant program are removed from the original language of the bill. An article appeared on the StarTribune website on Thursday April 9th indicating that the funding had been removed, adding comments from Representative Pat Garofalo (R - Farmington).

I fired off a number of messages to my legislators, those representing the schools I work with, members of the Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance Committee, a few others and Representative Garofalo. My note to Rep. Garofalo is shown below. I encourage any of you with an interest in this issue to voice it now. I've received a fair amount of feedback from my messages including some that aim to calm me by saying, "...things in St. Paul aren't always pretty..." and, "Bills are commodities... we trade commodities." I understand all of that, but it doesn't mean I have to like it, and I know that if we stay silent, then no one believes it is important.

*** Below is an email message sent on Friday, April 10th, 2015 ***

Representative Garofalo:

With all due respect, I believe any decision to defund the Office of Broadband Development (OBD) and the Border to Border (B2B) grant program will set rural Minnesota back years and maybe even decades and is a detriment to residents and businesses who wish to locate in rural areas of the state, not to mention schools, healthcare facilities and so on. 

I am the Executive Director of a mostly rural cooperative of school districts. We provide technology services to our districts including wide area network support, network services, Internet access and many other instructional and professional development services. I have also been working for four years with the Kanabec Broadband Initiative and the East Central Regional Broadband Committee to bring broadband options to our rural residents. I have testified for Representative Kresha's bills, including that which would have funded the OBD and B2B program.

A Star-Tribune article indicated that you believe wireless options are cheaper. I beg to differ. We have wireless providers in our area including fixed wireless, cellular and satellite. In ALL cases the costs to consumers are significantly higher than wired (copper or fiber) services due to high equipment costs, data caps and generally high monthly fees. The service level is significantly slower than wired options - in most cases barely reaching the minimum definition of broadband at best and usually much slower - and the wireless solutions experience many more service interruptions than any wired option. I think these are easily documented facts and I challenge you to find a significant number of consumers or rural business who are satisfied with wireless services and think it is an affordable solution. Certainly, in our part of that state, they are not affordable options.

I would concede that SOME wireless solutions MAY be cheaper to deploy - at least initially, but I believe that may be offset by the fact that the equipment to drive wireless solutions has a much shorter lifespan than most equipment used in wired solutions. Additionally, the limited amount of spectrum available for wireless solutions makes it difficult to deploy in some areas of the state. It is nothing more than a "Band-Aid" fix.

I encourage you to re-examine this issue and avoid making it a political pawn. Broadband is as important to life and economic development today as electricity and water. Rural Minnesotans will be the losers if this issue dies in the session. If this issue dies, it will effectively kill years of work done by groups around the state to build capacity for public-private partnerships - the kind that the B2B program created.

Please feel free to contact me at any time to discuss. My contact information, including cell phone are below. Thank you for your time and service to the state.

Regards,

Marc Johnson

Border to Border Broadband in Minnesota?

OK... it's been a year, so it's time to once again opine on the pages of the Interweb...

Today, Minnesota's Office of Broadband Development (part of DEED) released the long-awaited list of grant recipients for their $20 million Boarder to Boarder Broadband project. An impressive list of 17 projects scattered across the state of Minnesota. First, congratulations to those behind the funded projects. If you are lucky enough to live in one of the areas that will now receive high-speed broadband, welcome to the 21st century!! You'll love it! 

Next, am I disappointed that Kanabec County - and all of East Central Minnesota for that matter - was left out? Yes I am. Lots of people have been working hard for over four years to get better broadband options for our area. Another setback doesn't help, but we can learn from it and strive to present a better case next time. And I think we will. 

In the meantime, I've done a little math and present the following information... not to diminish the projects that were funded, but to illustrate just how big this problem still is in the state... and to hopefully help keep the momentum going into this legislative session as we look for continued funding of this program.

So, today's announcement helps the overall broadband conversation/discussion... as long as the legislature doesn't see this as "now we've fixed that problem." It looks to me that the projects chosen were some of the smaller $$ projects among the 40 applicants. They are nicely distributed across the state, and, yes, I know why that matters! There were a couple that were larger, but the average award is just over $1 million and most of the projects serve relatively small geographical and demographical numbers. There were 40 applications totaling $44 million in requests. I know there are lots of un and under served areas that didn't apply because the maximum $5 million amount wasn't enough to make a significant difference in their area, or because they didn't have the necessary partnerships or planning in place to make it happen. So... I hope the legislature doesn't look at this and say... "Well, looks like another $20 million should do the trick and we'll be done." That can't be further from the truth.

The latest broadband coverage information put out by the Office of Broadband (DEED) Found here: http://mn.gov/deed/images/households_terrestrial.pdf Indicates that 78.16% of Minnesota households are served by broadband that generally meets or exceeds the state goals. This is WIRED only as we know wireless has limitations and data caps that prevent it from being considered true "broadband" and limits it's affordability. Well, that leaves 21.84% of households un or under served. Minnesota has an estimated 2,107,232 households, which means there are 460,219 un or under served households in the state. The grants awarded today will serve 6,095 households which is just over 1% of the total un or under served households in the state. We've got a long ways to go! Also, if you look at that map referenced above and see the counties in red that have less than 50% of their households served... fewer than half of the funded projects are in those counties. Again, we have a long ways to go.

It's a start... and great news for the people in those communities. If you live in one of those areas, please thank your state representatives and senators. Then, if they happen to be in your area for a press conference or photo-op, or just to have a community forum, please remind them that there is still about 20% of the state's population that do not have the same opportunities. It would help us all if everyone would move that message forward.

Rural Broadband and Education - Part 1

Starting a multi-part series of posts about some of the issues around broadband access in rural areas and education. I've been working for several years with a variety of rural broadband initiatives including the Kanabec Broadband Initiative (KBI) and the East Central Broadband Initiative (ECBI). These groups, and others like them, continue to educate the general public about the importance of broadband, and work to bring more broadband options and affordability to rural parts of Minnesota.

It is no secret that with the proliferation of mobile devices, 1-1 initiatives and migration to cloud based services for productivity and curriculum resources, schools rely on broadband more than ever, and there is no looking back. Unfortunately, many of our students, especially those living in rural areas outside of communities, do not have adequate, affordable broadband access. This puts them at an immediate disadvantage in the new technology-laden education environment. We have a new divide to conquer. Of course, the lack of quality, affordable access in rural areas poses a number of problems from economic development to quality of life to healthcare, to name a few. My focus, however, continues to be on education.

To that end, I have participated in some community meetings recently, arranged by MN Senator Matt Schmit and sponsored by various community organizations. Senator Schmit has taken on the issue of rural broadband and spent time in November and January touring the state to hear about the needs of rural Minnesotans. I had the opportunity to attend two of the meetings in Mora and North Branch to represent the schools in the area. In both cases, I shared some of the initiatives going on in area schools and talked about how schools are limited to what they can expect from students using technology outside of the school buildings. Our schools have very high speed access and do not have speed or data usage caps. I shared that this has changed the way schools talk about technology. Our schools do not talk about what they can't do (because of low bandwidth), they talk about what they CAN do. Sadly, that is not the case with many families living in rural areas. With slow speeds, data caps and expensive overage charges, these families still talk about what they CAN'T do.

I will bring this message to the Border to Border Broadband conference on February 4th and 5th in St. Paul. Senator Schmit has invited me to participate with him on a panel to share the messages he heard around the state during his listening tour. I invite anyone interested in the rural broadband divide to attend this conference supported by the Blandin Foundation.

Up Next: I'll share some of the comments heard from the meetings around the idea of "how much bandwidth (or speed) is enough."

Successful Multi-Generational Interactive Video Conference Event

On December 10th, 2013, the Mora Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA), Kanabec Broadband Initiative (KBI) KBI and East Central MN Educational Cable Cooperative (ECMECC) joined together to present an interactive video conference (IVC) event at the Eastwood Life Enrichment Center (LEC) in Mora, MN. The LEC is a facility run by the Mora HRA as an event center for the residents of the Eastwood senior living complex as well as for community meetings and events. KBI, through the generous support of the Blandin Foundation, was able to outfit the LEC with modern audio/video equipment including a video conference system and high speed, broadband, Internet access (with support from Midcontinent Communications). 

Nearly 60 people assembled at the LEC to view an interactive presentation lead by the National Park Service and broadcast live from the grounds of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Mounument at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The presentation included a short documentary about the attacks of December 7th, 1941, an eyewitness account led by Jimmy Lee who was eleven at the time and living on a farm on the northern part of the harbor (a front row seat to the events of that day) and a question/answer session with Paul Heintz of the park service and Jimmy Lee.

It was an amazing "show" and the audience was glued to the screen. Among the participants in Mora were several veterans including John Kirkhuff of Mora who was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the attacks on December 7, 1941. In the video below, John (with help from his daughter Ginny Berg) had just finished providing his own brief account of the events of that day. Take a look and enjoy. Then remember to continually thank our veterans and active forces for their service to our country!



http://goo.gl/aCdE7G 

Thank you to the National Park Service, the Blandin Foundation, members of the KBI steering committee, staff at the LEC and ECMECC and all of those who were in attendance for making this a highly successful event that provided a moving experience for many, gratitude to our veterans and generated community interest in the technology that allows for such events to occur. We are already planning the next event which may be a fun (and educational) trip to another warm place later this winter.

I always enjoy seeing kids reactions when they participate in a truly interactive video conference event. I found that with adults it was no different. We can talk 'til we are blue in the face about the difference between interactive learning and passively watching a video but nothing gets the point across better than actually participating in a well planned and delivered lesson. I think 60 people walked out of the LEC that night who can now tell you how much better an interactive experience is.