Lac qui Parle County Talks Broadband

Over 30 community leaders from economic development, local government, education, business and health care met yesterday in Dawson, MN to begin a discussion on broadband deployment and use. Lac qui Parle County is in western Minnesota on the South Dakota border. The county’s communities range in size from just under 2,000 people down to towns with fewer than 100 residents. In the countryside, the farms can be large and the residents widely scattered. I was pleased to see several county commissioners and elected officials at the meeting. The group really understood the need to work on this topic at the county and regional level, rather than focus at the city level.

Existing Internet providers were well represented, including Farmers Mutual Telephone Cooperative, Frontier Communications, Farmers Cooperative Association and MVTV. Representing Blandin Foundation through Community Broadband Resources, I provided some background information on broadband technologies and the issues that rural communities are facing.

We talked extensively about the mix of existing service providers within the county and learned about some planned improvements. For example, Farmers Mutual Telephone Cooperative will have FTTP to every subscriber in its service area by the end of 2009. Frontier Communications is upgrading their backbone pipe into the region which will enable more capacity to the end-customers. They are also beginning to extend DSL services into the more rural parts of their exchange. The wireless providers talked about their ability to reach into the countryside.

People understood that this will require an incremental approach. Two first step needs emerged from the discussion – better understanding of what is available where and the need to education consumers, especially businesses, about the power of broadband and broadband applications. I look forward to meeting again with this motivated community.

The Economics of Rural FTTH

A couple of days ago I relayed that the current administrators of the Burlington (VT) fiber project felt “that Burlington Telecom will not be breaking even by June as earlier projected by previous general manager, Tim Nulty.”

Tim Nutly spoke at the Broadband Properties conference yesterday (as reported by Telephony Online). He talked about the economics of providing FTTH in rural areas.

I have to admit that I don’t know the costs involved firsthand, so I thought his explanation (and specificity) was very helpful:

Fiber triple-play deployment costs generally come in three categories: the hub, the hook-up and the pass. Building a hub is actually less expensive in rural areas because real estate costs are lower there, Nulty said. “Building a hub in a cow pasture is cheaper than doing it downtown.” Hooking up rural houses is more expensive, but not much, he said, partly because fiber costs have come down considerably. Vermont spends about $1600 per home connecting subscribers in the city and about $1800 per home in rural areas.

The biggest cost gap is in passing homes, since there’s so much more space between homes in rural areas (though rural areas have more aerial, pole-based networks, which are easier and less costly than the underground networks in cities and suburbs.) Vermont towns contain more than 100 houses per square mile, but its rural areas can contain about 12 houses per square mile. As a result, Vermont spends about $250 per home in the city on this part of the project and $1100 per home in rural areas.

However, passing homes is a small part of the overall cost of fiber deployment, Nulty said. And rural areas see higher service take rates because there’s less competition there. In rural towns due to get municipal fiber, Vermont is seeing 50% of the market presubscribe for its services, and Nulty expects that rate to reach 75% or 80% by the time funds are secured.

FiberNet Monticello April 2008 Update

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall as a town funded, designed and implemented fiber into their community? Well thanks to Lynne Dahl-Flemming we got something even better – we’ve got the notes from the fly on the wall.

Monticello received funding from Blandin Foundation as part of the Get Broadband program. After an amazing referendum vote for fiber last fall, they are moving ahead in all direction. Read on to hear how it’s going. I think this account will be particularly interesting to anyone who is in a position to consider fiber in their area…

Free Seminar on Community Broadband in Mpls on May 14

Alcatel-Lucent is offering a free, one-day seminar to encourage community leaders to network with peers and learn how to bring broadband to the community.

The will Answer your questions on:

1. How to overcome regulatory and legal issues?
2. How to develop and present your business case?
3. What funding sources are available?
4. What fiber technology to deploy?

The conference will be on May 14, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Learn more

What happens when a third, triple-play provider comes to town?

I am very interested to learn what happens when a third wired, triple-play provider enters a local market. Where does the third provider generally set their price point? What is the competitive response from the incumbent phone and/or cable providers? Is the competitive response a short-term special offer or are there long-term differences in prices that permanently affect the local market. I have been doing a little research here in Minnesota and my preliminary findings are that companies like Charter, Mediacom and Qwest maintain consistent pricing across Minnesota no matter whether there are two or three wired providers in the community. I am also interested in the impact on the pricing offered to the business community, both small and big bandwidth users; this information is more difficult to obtain.

What have you seen in your community? As communities go through the decision-making process about their own involvement in telecom investments, this is a critical consideration for marketing and cash flow projections.

Blandin Foundation announces Community Broadband Resource Program

Thanks to Becky LaPlant for sending on the exciting news from Blandin Foundation on the Community Broadband Resource Program…

Blandin Foundation announces Community Broadband Resource Program Initiative will help rural communities connect to broadband’s worldwide advantages Grand Rapids, MN—(February 15, 200 Blandin Foundation is pleased to announce the Community Broadband Resource Program (CBR). This newly created program offers technical and business consulting services to rural communities interested in researching, developing or advancing broadband capacity. Participating communities receive services at no charge.

CBR is the most recent program addition to Blandin Foundation’s Broadband Initiative, which also includes the “Get Broadband” and “LightSpeed” grant programs, the Blandin on Broadband blog and the Open Networks Feasibility Fund. The initiative is guided by a 16-member Strategy Board representing a broad range of private and public perspectives.

In designing this program, Blandin Foundation has applied its broadband experience gained from working with leadership in 29 rural communities.

Customized approach

“Blandin Foundation’s Community Broadband Resource Program is unique in the state,” says Bill Coleman, project leader for the program. “This program will be customized for each community because when it comes to broadband decision-making, we know that no two communities have the same set of challenges or priorities.

“While some communities may already have committed resources and know what they want to do, others may not really understand broadband capabilities and don’t know where to start,” Coleman says.

“Our job is to facilitate the good work that community leaders are capable of doing. We help identify and clarify key community priorities, involve project stakeholders and assist community leaders in developing their plans and understanding their planning needs–whatever would help them move forward to the next step.”

Broadband Opportunities for Rural America

Thanks to Becky LaPlant for sending me a heads up on a new broadband resource for rural areas created by the FCC and the USDA.

It appears to largely be a portal of information from the FCC web site. I think the most valuable section will be the funding section, where they track funding from the FCC and USDA.

FCC/USDA Workshops
The portal also promotes 4 workshops that they are having throughout the year. Here’s a description from the site:

The topics to be covered at the workshops include: the different technology platforms used to provide broadband services, USDA funding for broadband deployment, the FCC’s Rural Health Care Pilot program, and wireless spectrum access. The workshops will also provide communities and organizations with an opportunity to share their experiences about broadband deployment in rural and hard-to-reach areas.

Intro to Broadband Technologies
They also provide information on a variety of broadband technologies – but I have to say that the information is a little uneven. The wireless section is extensive, which makes sense from the FCC perspective but maybe overkill for most of the communities. Fiber, on the other hand, is pretty light.

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down
I can’t say that this is the first resource I would send to someone who just started a broadband project for their community. (I would suggest the recent ISRL report.) But it is a good way to access the FCC and policy info a community leader might need. Also I might keep an eye on their funding section if I thought I might qualify for upcoming funding.

Advice on Feasibility Studies

Sometimes you think you ask a simple question and you’re wrong. In January, as part of the Blandin Broadband Initiative, Bill Coleman and Eric Lampland  gave a presentation on RFPs and Feasibility Studies. (Their presentation is online.) It was very well received so I thought it might be interesting to get together a “top 10 tips for feasibility studies” type thing for the blog.

There are a number of very smart people on the Blandin Broadband Strategy Board – so I asked some of them for help.

Mike O’Connor emphasized the need to define a project and offers a Questionnaire that will help to do that. Answering the questions will take time but will save time and money in the long run. One question on the questionnaire is - “what’s your preferred problem-solving approach”, which is another way of saying that it’s very important to have a methodology in mind when starting a project.

Mike also offers an article by PacketFront (Planning Is the Key to Success for Community Fiber Projects by PacketFront) that offers a great example of a high-level overview of a methodology.

A controversy arose regarding the definition of a feasibility study. The temptation is to call everything a feasibility study. As Eric Lampland put it - if you’ve got support, know what you’re trying to do and want to know if it’s doable, that’s feasibility. However, if what you’re doing is exploration, education, codifying data, establishing objectives and initially lining up support — that’s not a feasibility study.

Eric offers the feasibility elements from RUS Bulletin 1738 , which is their application guide. These elements are required for a RUS loan and would be required for most bonding authorities, at a minimum and would be a good start.

So there you go - not a top ten but some good tools and a little perspective on feasibility.

Overview of Broadband Economics: a presentation from Digital Cities

Thanks to Steven Glapa from Zhone for giving us permission to post a PDF(Zhone Presentation) and MP3 (Seeing Optical with Clarity Zhone Digital City Expo 2008) of his presentation from the Digital Cities Expo in Arizona last week.

He presented a nice background on the different types of broadband. Bill Coleman attended the session and though it would be a big help for blog readers. I looked through the material too. Steve spent time working in telecommunications with Japan, Korea, Europe and so it’s interesting to hear his perspective. One thing he points out is the difference in policy.

Clearfield: fiber provider in Minnesota

Sorry to be posting so much today. I was sick over the weekend and I want to get caught up – especially with the Minnesota mentions of broadband, including the following company profile from a recent Star Tribune article (Clearfield: Newly wired for profit).

Minnesota-based Clearfield, is a new – well reborn – company that provides copper and fiber-optic equipment to rural phone companies. They used to be called APA and they used to make optical lenses and ultraviolet-light detectors.

Clearfield now serves companies such as Paul Bunyan Telephone Co., 3 Rivers Communication, Heart of Iowa Communications, Pioneer Telephone Cooperative and Rural Telephone.

Apparently the rural FTH market is $3 billion. So it’s good to see a Minnesota company jumping in and it’s good for rural Minnesota to have a local provider.

For any communities of telephone companies that are thinking about fiber Clearfield introduced an easy snap-in wire harnessing cassette technology called Clearview in October, which cut Clearfield’s wire packaging costs by 20 to 25 percent and has been well-received. They just unveiled a new and improved version this month. Here’s a brief blurb from that press release:

“The Clearview Cassette was designed to address the limitations and concerns our customers expressed to us regarding traditional solutions,” said Johnny Hill, vice president of product development and management for APA Cables & Networks. “Our customers asked for a product that would allow them to incrementally grow their networks, in both inside and outside plant environments, while optimizing and protecting signal performance.”