By JoAnn Johnson

Possibly good news for Minnesota today with the release of the FCC’s allocation numbers to price cap carriers under CAF 1, the first phase of the Connect America Fund disbursement.  Minnesota’s two price cap carriers, CenturyLink and   Frontier rank one and two in the total allocations being offered, with CenturyLink at almost $90 million and Frontier at almost $72 million.   The carriers have 90 days, until July 24, 2012, to accept or decline all or part of the subsidy offered.  Whatever amount they accept will be divided by $775 to get the number of unserved homes that must be deployed to and the carriers have 2 years from that date to reach two-thirds of those and another year to complete the build out.

We’ll be watching with interest and share information as it becomes publically available.

They chose U-reka as their partner in this research because not only do our principals have extensive technical knowledge, they also leverage their own vast experience in actually building and operating next generation systems to help both public and private partners create win-win solutions.  In order to do that efficiently the existing relationships with all sides of these industries and interest groups will be tapped to ensure every idea is explored and every option evaluated properly and thoroughly.  U-reka has learned that these explorations will always result in a different result in every different instance.  Because we remain open to all technologies and all partners, the data that CVII will receive throughout the project will help them make solid decisions about their future. Our clients have come to value our advice enough to refer us to others.  We appreciate it greatly and look forward to getting to know CVII.  Thank you for choosing U-reka!

Now that the first deadline for this legislature to pass bills out of their first committee in order to stay viable for this biennium, we think it’s time to take a look again at those bills that have a potential impact on areas meaningful to MN’s broadband progress.

We’ll start with SF2080/Hf2475.

This is basically a de-regulatory bill, described as a streamlining coordination to federal law, written by MTA.  Basically a sound bill, it retains the broadband language on goals that addresses the 2015 ubiquitous speeds desired, the 65% majority vote requirement on muni telcom  offerings, moves the regulatory responsibility for telecom to the PUC (where I’ve long believed it should be-MN is the only state I’ve worked in that has 3 regulatory agencies for telecom-PUC, DOC and AG)  The industry  sees regulation from the Commerce Department as being harsh or benign depending on who the governor is, while the Public Utilities Commission is seen as a more deliberative body not as susceptible to political vagaries.  I wish there was language in there that moved the Office of Broadband specifically to the PUC also (which would move Diane Wells and keep the effort intact).  HF 1692 has been replaced by this bill.  (HF1692 was Joe Hoppe’s AT&T bill that changed access charges in MN, unnecessary after federal rulings so AT&T stopped their rather vigorous activity on it and MTA reworked their own bill instead)  I think 2080 will move, watch for committee action soon or it won’t make it to the floor in time.

HF2678 – I think is good, haven’t read it yet but we need to reinstate educational funding.  I’ll look closer later when it’s posted.

HF 2695, Rep. Linda Runbecks bill…..seems like it’s just part of Taxpayer League mindset, will bear watching as it’s very detrimental.  Although neither MTA nor MCCA pushed for it, they think it’s helpful to them and it could find its way into the MTA bill.  That would be a mistake for them since it would immediately set up a very vocal opposition to the MTA bill as a whole that looks like it won’t face much opposition otherwise.

SF2054—Wireless at rest areas, I love this in other states and it’s very useful for road work but will Republican majorities allow something that will cost money?

HF 2533—Tax credit for broadband equipment, Sheldon Johnson usually writes bills I agree with, and this one has potential to help providers.  We may be able to leverage it, should it pass, for purposes of public private partnership ventures into unserved areas.  It would go into the larger tax bill probably.

SF1528—Regarding online learning, creates an advisory council, while the companion HF2127 requires every graduate to have at least one ’digital’ credit.  They don’t match. The  Senate bill is on general orders, meaning it could pass first and be sent to House, where it would likely be amended by 2127 language and sent back rather than a conference committee.  If it doesn’t get a floor vote, could still go in an omnibus education bill.  House version on its third engrossment, second reading.

HF 2075 (Dittrich) requires any school endowment funds under 127a.33 to only be spent on technology.  Similar HF 2036 (Garofalo) does same for endowment funds over $28 per pupil. Both referred to committee

SF0979, HF1237 adds broadband subscription rate to list of things included in the MN educational deduct ion from Federal  Taxable income for state tax purposes if you’re a K12 parent.

We will be watching the bills as they progress (or die a quiet death) and as always, we welcome your additions, corrections and comments.

The Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services project is proceeding very well. Despite a late construction start at the end of July our construction contractor MP Nexlevel did a great job and completed the half of the network build passing 1750 homes and installing approximately 1200 drops. Sales efforts were even better than expected with 63% of the passed subscribers signing up for service in our initial sales effort. With the construction season over we are now focused on turning up services through the winter. To date we have over 500 homes installed and delivering service. We are currently turning up services to 300 homes per month. At this rate we will have all 1100 subscribers turned up by the end of April. So far the winter has been mild and we expect to be in the ground constructing by mid-April barring any extreme weather through the rest of the winter. The construction on the second half of the network should be completed by earl fall and the new subscribers turned up by the end of the year.

JoAnne was available to help shed light on broadband policy in and outside of Minnesota, answering general questions the Senators had on an earlier presentation from the Minnesota Broadband Task Force.

February 9th-I gave an update on the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services Project to the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association with Bill Coleman from Community Technology Advisors.  Great discussion on how Municipal Utilities can become involved in the process. (See below.)

February 14th-I will be presenting to the Minnesota Senate Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee following the Minnesota Broadband Taskforce with an update on the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services project.

March 13th-I will be presenting to Wright County Commissioners and member community representatives about “What is Broadband?” and “Broadband Projects Across Minnesota”

March 26th-I will be presenting at the Minnesota Telecom Alliance about “Public Private Partnerships”.

As you can there there is a wide variety of constituencies interested in the subject verifying what we have always said:  there are many ways to get broadband to your communities and one size does not fit all.  See you on the road this spring.

By the end of January, about 300 Lakefield residents will enjoy a range telecommunication services powered by fiber-optic cables.

U-reka Broadband was instrumental in helping SMBS get a grant worth $12.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Here’s the project description from the grant application…

The city of Windom, Minn., a member of the Southwest Minnesota Broadband Group (SWMBG), will provide Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) infrastructure to eight rural communities in southwestern Minnesota. SWMBG includes the communities of Jackson, Lakefield, Windom, Round Lake, Bingham Lake, Brewster, Wilder, Heron Lake, and Okabena. The network will consist of a 125-mile fiber ring that will connect the communities to the Windomnet network and an FTTP infrastructure within the communities. The ring will be 96 strands with a 1-gigabyte transport network that is easily upgradeable to 10 gigabytes.

As the Worthington Daily Globe reports, Lakefield is already seeing connection. Unfortunately construction has slowed for the cold weather, but the other communities will be seeing progress again this spring…

As the majority of the customers in Lakefield are already connected to their options of Internet, voice, and/or cable TV, Olsen explained that installation in Round Lake started Wednesday.

“We’re installing for the Round Lake mayor today (Wednesday),” he added. “The little thing called winter showed up, but we will kick off construction again in April for Heron Lake, Brewster and Bingham Lake. By September, we’re hoping to have our first round of construction completed. There’s an ongoing need and want for the service.”

Great to hear the project running so smoothly.

According to Mr. Friedman, two things have struck him about the candidate debates so far. One, they were entertaining, but, two, they were disconnected from the 21st century realities of a new job market. The reality, according to the columnist, is a merger between globalization and information technology, which thanks to the hand held computers, social networks and the ‘cloud’ is empowering a new wave of creativity and innovation. Mr. Friedman talks of “ecosystems” and says “The best of these ecosystems will be cities and towns that combine a university, an educated populace, a dynamic business community and the fastest broadband connections on earth. These will be the job factories of the future.”

Gee, with the exception of that fastest connections thing, sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? We could be that ecosystem in the greater Twin Cities area and feed it with all kinds of creativity and innovation from the rest of the state if we could tackle that fastest connections thing with some comprehensive real action. You can find the article online and contains quotes from Blair Levin that will rile our rural side. Read at least some of the comments too. Please give it a look and let us know your opinion. Maybe this is our rally cry.

Challenges are surfacing in the form of lawsuits filed in different federal courts to the FCC’s Order on USF/ICC that will result in a lottery for which circuit will hear the cases. The NTCA filed their contention that the Order exceeds the authority of the Commission and the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission filed also stating that the state’s authority is being usurped. The ITA, MTA and WSTA are all scheduling workshops to help their members understand and comply with the changed and additional compliance requirements that will go into effect regardless of the status of the suits. We will be attending at least one of these sessions in our continuing effort to keep up with the regulatory and legal ramifications of the move to a broadband based support system.

The FCC is also holding workshops on the demise of the PSTN—the Public Switched Telephone Network—which policymakers discuss as if it had died already and providers find very premature. So far the workshop panels have raised a lot of questions but offered little in the way of solutions for moving to an IP based new network. We’re watching this with interest too.

We also assisted the Commerce Department with the collection of information on the status of MN’s stimulus projects which we found interesting. Several of the projects have made impressive gains this year. As soon as the updates become public we’ll share them with you.

We here wish all of you– wherever you are– a very, very happy holiday season!