Blandin Announces Broadband Community Resources
Blandin Foundation’s new Community Broadband Resource Program (http://tinyurl.com/29b48l)offers technical and business consulting services to rural communities interested in researching, developing or advancing broadband capacity. Participating communities receive services at no charge.(http://tinyurl.com/2vogak) 

Minnesota Broadband Vendors
While Qwest has reported that they have no intention of investing in FTTH (http://tinyurl.com/2fcfha), Verizon announced an investment of $96 million, although FTTH was not mentioned. (http://tinyurl.com/3aele9)

Net Neutrality Comes to the Fore
Early in February, the Internet Preservation Act was introduced into the House. (http://tinyurl.com/2o9hzy) While last week, the FCC held a meeting to hear from Comcast on their network management processes and from others who take issue with their throttling traffic based on rules that are seen as neither necessarily reasonable nor transparent. (http://tinyurl.com/24uqgp)

USDA Funding
USDA Rural Development announced Rural Opportunity Grants for training and technical assistance for business development, entrepreneurs, and economic development officials and to assist with economic development planning. (http://tinyurl.com/2ls23f)

Broadband Reports
Two broadband reports came out in February that raised some eyebrows. First, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) proclaimed the Bush Administration’s broadband initiative a great success. (http://tinyurl.com/36pquy) Next, Connected Nation published a report with the projected economic impact of a broadband push across the US; the potential annual economic impact in Minnesota is $2,791,481,531.83. (http://tinyurl.com/3bfcp5)

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Apple Valley
Students from Scott Highlands Middle School were one group of only a dozen selected to host the Megaconference Jr, a worldwide online conference for kids. (http://tinyurl.com/38ssgk)

Baxter
Baxter-based Nextera has acquired StoneBridge Wireless Inc. and its 60 tower sites across the Twin Cities metro area. (http://tinyurl.com/22vnrz)

Bemidji
Paul Bunyan Telephone Cooperative has expressed their intent to buy Blackduck Telephone and Cablevision. (http://tinyurl.com/253rs6)

Brainerd
A recent survey in Brainerd indicates that television is the most used media at 31 percent followed by newspaper at 24 percent, Internet at 19 percent and radio at 18 percent. (http://tinyurl.com/2wd8np)

Cannon Falls
The Internet is cited as a tool to keep youth in the community in an editorial that asks, “How can we get our kids back?” (http://tinyurl.com/26fh8n)

Dakota County
Dakota Future hosted a forum on telecommunications for state and local elected officials, telecommunications providers and city and county IT and economic development staff. The agenda included presentations about the importance of broadband to business and communities and panel discussion with local providers. (http://tinyurl.com/2hgzs6)

Eagan
Eagan has selected Design Nine to consult to help them make broadband a priority in their city. (http://tinyurl.com/268g5z)

Faribault
The Faribault High School Band has set up an online fundraising plan; friends and family members can contribute to the band by buying items online. (http://tinyurl.com/ys2s66)

Hutchinson
The LightSpeed project in Hutchinson has been going well. Their IP VCR has been used many times since its installation. They recorded the Veterans Day connection to Iraq to "bring home" by video a local pastor. They have also used it to record training sessions for E-rate, Online Testing and Financial training.

Lakeview
Facebook web sites have been created to support community members after a tragic bus accident. (http://tinyurl.com/3xjh2u)

Kandiyohi
The Get Broadband program in Kandiyohi has been busy with web site development classes for business and general training for residents. They will be offering grants to businesses to create or redesign web sites. They are creating a community-wide broadband service map. (http://tinyurl.com/ywyfoe)

Minneapolis
Minneapolis Wireless hopes to have the entire city covered by the end of March. (http://tinyurl.com/29fu2d)

Monticello
The Monticello City Council awarded an engineering contract for the design of the city-owned fiber optics system to Spectrum Engineering Corporation of Auburn, Indiana. (http://tinyurl.com/2e34gk)

Osakis
Helen Conde, from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, spoke on issues facing Osakis and many other rural communities and mentioned that the key to economic development is business investment in the community, such as Arvig Communication System’s move to equipping Osakis with broadband communications service, which will make it possible to do business from anywhere. (http://tinyurl.com/33cwd8)

Owatonna
The blogsphere and a dedication to Ron Paul brought notoriety to one Owatonna man when he was cited several times for the oversized Ron Paul decal on the rear window of his car. (http://tinyurl.com/34r6t2)

Morrison County
Rather than have one of their students miss school after an operation, Swanville schools used the Internet to keep a student in touch with school and classmates by setting up a Webcam in the student’s home and his classroom so he was able to attend class from his dining room table. (http://tinyurl.com/2oetao)

Sebeka/Menahga
Mayor Dave Anderson of Sebeka and Mayor Donna Anderson of Menahga talk about how broadband technology can help small towns thrive today. (http://tinyurl.com/227v7m)

Staples
Lakewood Health Systems has four vendors coming in to talk about telemedicine systems in February and March. Reports from others who have incorporated telemedicine systems have been encouraging. (http://tinyurl.com/32y7z8)

Stevens County
The Get Broadband project in Stevens County helped many small businesses create web sites and learn about search engine optimization with the help of MTI. (http://tinyurl.com/yrkmv2) 

Wadena
The Get Broadband team in Wadena has scheduled the first in a series of classes called "Be a Better Internet User: Internet 101" for March 18th at Minnesota State Community and Technical College, Wadena Campus. Follow up courses will be held in April. The course is designed for participants to learn to be safer, more effective Internet users. It will address safety concerns such as spyware, viruses, spam, and phishing as well as better search techniques.

March 2-5 – Minnesota Telecom Alliance (Minneapolis, MN) – annual convention (http://www.mnta.org/events/events.html)

March 8, April 12, May 3 TIES Weekend Workshop (St Paul, MN) – training for teachers on interactive whiteboards, wikis, podcasting, Excel and more. (http://www.ties.k12.mn.us/Weekend_Workshops)

May 9 – Living in a Changing World (Minneapolis, MN) – a talk and book signing by Thomas Freidman (http://tinyurl.com/2h7vnn)

May 12-22 – Intelligent Community Forum Immersion Lab (various locations) - see some of North America's Intelligent Communities. (http://tinyurl.com/39r8j9)

The intersection of country music and advanced technology resulted in a fun stay in Nashville for me recently.  At a municipal FTTP conference sponsored by Calix, I facilitated a session on getting a community ready to build a network. Attendees were limited to representatives from communities who either have or are thinking about building municipal fiber networks and all sessions were discussions rather than presentations.  My group had an active discussion and our hour together went very quickly.

Once the sessions were over, I got a taste of the Nashville music scene.  Local establishments have live music playing about 12 hours per day with a parade of musicians competing for playing time and patrons’ contribution to the ever passing donation bucket.  Newcomers beg for a chance to “borrow the band” so that they can sing in front of an audience.  Songwriters sneak in a couple of their own tunes while keeping the crowd happy with cover versions of top hits.  Bartenders shed their aprons and sit in for a song or two.  In just two nights, I could see that, in many ways, the Nashville music scene functioned as kind of a small town where everyone wears multiple hats and steps in where needed.

The telecom industry and music business are both highly affected by new technologies and business models making the traditional players very nervous.  Considerable thought is going into strategy development.  You could see the creative chaos in action in Nashville, both in the music business and the municipal telecom utility business.  In each sector, people are making choices on technology, product mix, distribution and pricing, trying to make the right choices and then reacting as market conditions change.  One only has to think about how the music business has been changed in the past decade as a result of broadband to see the challenges facing both industries.

The news from the municipal FTTP utilities was generally positive.  Communities are successfully building and operating these networks and are meeting their financial expectations. These utilities were very interested in the approach in market development that we have encouraged through the Blandin Get Broadband program, especially the efforts to work to increase the technological sophistication and e-commerce savvy of the local business community.  For now, the network provides an opportunity to obtain a competitive advantage for their communities; stimulating the kind of creative environment that emulates the Nashville music scene is the next critical step.