A group of rural residents living east of Madison, Wisconsin, gathered near Portage of Columbia County to discuss their lack of affordable high speed access to the Internet. These are people for whom slow, overpriced DSL would be an improvement. Lack of access to the Internet is a drain on rural economies -- their real estate market suffer and they are unable to telecommute, when they would benefit more from it than most who do have the option. They lack access to long-distance education opportunities in a time when the cost of gas makes driving to school prohibitively expensive. Andy Lewis, who has been working with the Building Community Capacity through Broadband Project with U-W Extension, was on hand to discuss some of the lessons learned through their work, which is largely funded by a broadband stimulus award. The incumbent providers encouraged residents without access to aggregate their demand and create petitions to demonstrate the available demand. Of course they did. And if CenturyLink decides it can get a sufficient return on its slow and unreliable DSL, they will build it out to some of those unserved areas. This is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario for rural residents. DSL was starting to be obsolete years ago. The better solution is finding nearby cooperatives and munis that will extend next-generation networks that can provide fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet. Getting a DSL to a town will do very little to attract residents and nothing to attract businesses. It is a 20th century technology in a rapidly evolving 21st century world. The Beaver Dam Daily Citizen covered the meeting, which eventually turned away from how to beg for broadband to how they can build it themselves:

But several attendees asked why the government can't play a role in making high-speed service available everywhere, in the same way that the government helped bring about rural electrification and telephone service.

This is a very good question. They may decide not to follow that path, but given the importance of access to the Internet, they should look at options for building a network that puts community needs first.

As Australia rolls out its National Broadband Network (NBN), an open access mostly FTTH network that will connect 90% of the population (with most of the rest connected with high capacity wireless), it is exploring telehealth opportunities:

“Expanding telehealth services to older Australians still living in their own homes will help health professionals identify potential health problems earlier, reduce the need for older Australians to travel to receive treatment and increase access to healthcare services and specialists.”

Australia has recognized that the private sector will not meet the needs of its businesses and residents and is therefore investing in a next-generation open access network and seeking ways to maximize its social benefits. Israel appears poised to follow Australia's lead. And what is happening in the US? Well, AT&T admits that DSL is dying, has stopped expanding its supposed next-generation product, and is working state legislatures to prevent others from building the needed networks. SNAFU.

A rural Fiber-to-the-Farm project that started in Sibley County has added three new towns to its potential territory due to the extremely high interest in fast, affordable, and reliable connections to the Internet. The current providers aren't getting the job done and few expect that to change given the cost of improving services. An article last year reported on present difficulties for many in Sibley:

Soeffker, who farms with her husband in rural Sibley County, said the dish receiver they must use works fine in good weather but balks during heavy rain and snowstorms. Meantime, her husband struggles with a lagging Internet speed of .6 megabits a second that falls short of meeting his business needs when he’s selling commodities.

The committee organizing the network set a goal for demonstrating the interest of something like 50% of the population in the target area. There has been some confusion as to exactly how many they should have before committing to the project but with just two mass mailings, they have received nearly 3,000 positive responses (of the over 8000 households that could be served). This is a very strong response. To keep the public informed, they have had numerous public meetings in each of the communities that will be involved. To be as open as possible, they would often have three meetings in a town per day -- a morning, afternoon, and evening meeting to accomodate everyone's schedule. As this project moves forward, no one can claim the group has been anything but open with the plan. On January 19, they had a major meeting with over 100 people attending, including many elected officials from the towns. For over two and a half hours, they had five presentations and numerous questions.

Minnesota Public Radio has once again covered some of the many benefits coming from the stimulus-funded Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services that grew out of WindomNet, a small muni network. It is now offering some of the fastest connections in the region to people who previously only had dial-up or slow DSL.

Schensted and his wife are the first in their southwest Minnesota community to connect to a new high-speed Internet service. He said the new service is everything it was advertised to be. "We're getting anywhere from 50 megabits downloading and about 20 to 30 uploading," Schensted said. "It's just really incredibly fast."

Stimulus dollars spent on expanding publicly owned networks gets the most bang for the taxpayer's buck and should have been a much larger focus for the broadband stimulus. The people and businesses served by this network have faster connections at lower prices than we can get in the metro area of Minneapolis/St Paul.

Schensted's house is connected to the nearly $13 million Southwest Minnesota Broadband Service project that will serve eight communities: Bingham Lake, Brewster, Heron Lake, Jackson, Lakefield, Okabena, Round Lake and Wilder. Internet equipment Schensted said he has never had that kind of Internet speed, even when he lived in the Twin Cities. "This is perhaps overkill for even my home," he said. "I'm not complaining about it, but it's a wonderful overkill. My wife and I can both be using a computer, we can be streaming something on the television, all at the same time which is something we wouldn't have dreamed of before."

Smart public investments can connect everyone in this state, at a fraction of the price that it would cost to subsidize the big private companies to do it. They are too inefficient and require too large a margin of profit, in addition to a host of other problems.

Last year we noted that a bill to expand local authority to invest in publicly owned broadband networks would return in 2012. HB 1711 is in Committee and causing a bit of a stir. "A bit of a stir" is good -- such a reaction means it has a chance at passing and giving Washington's residents a greater opportunity to have fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet. Washington's law presently allows Public Utility Districts to build fiber-optic networks but they cannot offer retail services. They are limited to providing wholesale services only -- working with independent service providers to bring telecom services to the public. Unfortunately, this approach can be financially debilitating, particularly in rural areas. Building next generation networks in very low density areas is hard enough without being forced to split the revenues with third parties. Last year, House Bill 2601 created a study to examine telecommunications reform, including the possibilty of municipality and public utility district provisioning. The University of Washington School of Law examined the issues and released a report [pdf] that recognizes the important role public sector investments can play:

Broadband infrastructure is this century’s interstate highway system: a public investment in an infrastructure that will rapidly connect Washington’s citizens statewide, nationally, and internationally; fuelling growth, competition, and innovation. Like highway access, the path to universal broadband access varies with the needs of the local community. Our primary goal is to expand broadband access. We believe allowing municipalities and PUDs to provide broadband services addresses the most significant hurdles to broadband expansion: the high cost of infrastructure. In conjunction with a state USF, PUDs and municipalities are well placed to address the needs of their consumers. A secondary goal is to promote a competitive marketplace.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is hosting an informational meeting on Thursday, January 12, at 1:00. For those who cannot make it in person, it will be webcast here. The PDF announcement is here.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will convene an informational meeting in the format of panel discussion to examine the implications of the FCC Order with respect to (i) universal service funding, (ii) intercarrier compensation and (iii) the substantive and procedural tasks that the Commission can be expected to face in the coming months. The meeting will commence with opening remarks by Commission Chair Ellen Anderson and Commissioner Michael Rothman of the Minnesota Department Commerce. The panel discussion will be moderated by Commissioner Betsy Wergin. The panelists are:

• Jeff Lindsey; CenturyLink
• Brent Christensen; Minnesota Telecom Alliance
• Dan Lipschultz; Moss Barnett PA, competitive carrier perspective
• Tom Cohen; Kelley, Drye Warren LLP for the American Cable Association
• Dave Conn; T-Mobile
• Dennis Ahlers; Minnesota Department of Commerce.

The Commission will welcome questions from attendees as time permits.

I would have specifically liked to hear how the rural telephone coops would be affected by the inter-carrier compensation changes as those charges have helped many rural communities gain access to broadband. Apparently, the MTA rep will represent their viewpoint.

A new documentary from California explores the failure of the private sector and competition more generally to sufficiently invest in fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet.  It comes in three parts and runs about 25 minutes in total.  

This provides a good summary of the present broadband landscape and how AT&T, Comcast, and other major providers are not the answer to our increasing need for better connections to the Internet.

 

One of our kindred spirits across the pond reached out to me after I wrote about Vermont's self-funded community network. The B4RN initiative, Broadband for the Rural North, has launched using a coop model that will offer 1Gbps connections to everyone in the covered territories. The business plan is available here.

Broadband for the Rural North Ltd has been registered as a Community Benefit Society within the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 (IPS), and is controlled by the Financial Services Authority. Shares will be issued to provide funding for the project and members of the community will be encouraged to subscribe to the share issue. The share issue will comply with the Enterprise Initiative Scheme established by HMRC to encourage individual share holdings in new and developing companies. Under certain circumstances investors could reclaim 30% of the value of shares produced. As a community company, the project will be funded and to a greater extent built by the community for the community. Our ambition is to keep expenditure, where possible, within the community. In addition to purchasing shares, the community will have the opportunity to “purchase” shares in exchange for labour and materials during the project build. The initial share offer will be £2,000,000 of shares with a face value of £1, to be launched in late 2011 and open for 1 year. The project is expected to commence on site in early 2012 and completed by the year end. The initial network will be progressively added to over subsequent years until approximately 15000 properties in adjoining rural parishes are completely connected to the FTTH network.

To keep costs low in their rural areas, B4RN will be taking a non-traditional approach:

B4RN will adopt a different approach; we will lay the duct not on the highway but across the farmland on the other side of the wall. Digging a narrow trench and installing a duct within it is dramatically less expensive across private farmland than along the highway.

The nDanville network of rural southern Virginia has long been a favorite of ours (previous coverage is available here). The network has helped Danville go from being notable for having the highest unemployment rate in Virginia to being ranked as the third top digital city in the nation, according to a recent article. Danville's City Manager was honored by the Southern Piedmont Technology Council for developing the nDanville network:

Danville City Manager Joe King received the Chairman's Award for his leadership in advancing the development of a modern telecommunications infrastructure in the region, a key factor in Danville's economic development renaissance.

King had been the director of the city-owned utility when it drew up plans for a fiber-optic network to be built incrementally until it could connect every home, business, and community anchor institution in Danville Utility's territory. At the time, Danville was suffering tremendously from the loss of tobacco and textile industries.

Today, the nDanville net-work connects hundreds of businesses, has sharply re-duced costs for local gov-ernment, health care provid-ers, and local schools, and has introduced more competition into the telecommunications marketplace.

Danville Utilities has 44,000 electric meters, half of which are located in Danville (44 sq miles). The others are scattered across over 450 sq miles surrounding the city. The Southern Piedmont Technology Council serves the technology industry in Danville as well as nearby counties and another city. Even in 2004, many in Danville did not have broadband access to the Internet, as outlined in an early document explaining the network. Verizon barely offered DSL and Adelphia offered limited cable modem service. Andrew Cohill, a consultant assisting the project, has offered more background in a recent article of Broadband Communities.

Vermont's East Central Fiber-Optic Network (ECFiber) has finished its second round of financing. We noted that the network had exceeded its financing goals at the beginning of this year by raising over $1 million and subsequently began connecting rural homes with its next-generation network. (See all of our ECFiber coverage here.) The network is now connecting 120 households, a bit below its goal of 164 for the end of the calendar year... but it also had to deal with an unexpected hurricane (Irene) that seriously disrupted the entire state and kept fiber-splicers running ragged. ECFiber has just completed its second round of financing. While the first round was dominated by a few major investors, the second round had a broader base -- a sign that many in the community have embraced the approach. From the ECFiber press release:

ECFiber is using an innovative funding method to extend its network, supported by local citizens who lend funds that enable build-out to local neighborhoods within and across member towns. Citizens who invest as little as $2500 allow ECFiber to reach all households along designated routes. ECFiber determines where it will build by choosing routes that reach the greatest number of unserved businesses and households, which are then connected to ECFiber’s state-of-the-art fiber-optic service.

These people are literally investing in themselves. ECFiber is an InterLocal Contract with a Governing Board composed of a representiative from each member town (of which there are 23). Investors are purchasing tax exempt 15 year promissory notes that effectively earn 6% interest (due to the one year holiday from interest and principal). They have raised $340,000 in this round of financing, which will allow the network to pass 60-65% of Barnard's 950 residents.