Spring refuses to appear here in Minnesota, home of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative team. The lingering snow and ice makes the 2018 Broadband Communities Summit seem super nice — it will be located in warm, sunny Austin. You can still register online for the opportunity to attend the event; this year’s theme is FIBER: Putting your Gigs To Work.

The program has been taking shape as new panelists and topics have been added to the agenda for the 4-day event.

As usual, Christopher will be at the event to answer questions, direct conversations, and tackle both new and persisting issues that relate to connectivity. On May 1st at 3p.m., he’ll be presenting as part of the "Economic Development Track Blue Ribbon Panel" along with Nicol Turner-Lee, Ph.D., from the Center for Technology Innovation Brookings Institution and Will Rhinehart, Director of Technology and Innovation Policy at the American Action Forum. Lev Gonick, CIO from Arizona State University, will be leading the discussion.

Later that day, Christopher will also be leading a panel titled "Creating a Tech Ecosystem," which brings together community leaders from different areas of the country who discuss the elements that complement broadband infrastructure. They have a conversation that includes supporting start-ups, developing a tech workforce, investors, incubators, accelerators and youth/adult tech programs. 

Look for Christopher to participate in other discussions and sit in on other panels. You can also check out who else will be speaking at the Summit; it’s a long list that covers a broad range of expertise.

So Many Topics

A few of the other topics that will be tossed around by the long list of presenters include:

• Electric Cooperatives
• Open Access
• IoT
• MDUs
• Rural Broadband

Topics are organized into tracks, so if you're attending the Summit in search of answers related to a specific area, it's easier to organize your day. If you're interests are broader, you may have a hard time deciding which panels and discussions to attend.

CLIC Special Program

Don't forget about the Broadband Communities Summit coming up in April. The weather should be optimal in Austin, Texas, for shaking off winter blahs. From April 30th - May 3rd, attendees will be learning all about FIBER: Putting Your Gigs To Work at the Renaissance Hotel; you can still make it if you register online.

The agenda has developed nicely since we first told you about the event a month ago. View it here. 

CLIC For Results

On the afternoon of the first day, the Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) will be ready to present a special program, The Vital Role of Local Choice.

Great nations are built on great cities and towns. Over the last few years, communities across America have come to realize that their ability to achieve greatness, or even success, in the years ahead will depend on their ability to acquire affordable access to fiber-rich communications networks.

...

We will continue to help members of CLIC and our allies to be as effective as possible in opposing barriers to local Internet choice.  Emphasizing the positive, we will showcase successful local initiatives reflecting the benefits of local control for the community’s economic and broadband future. We will discuss the factual and legal arguments that work best in refuting the new wave of objections to community broadband and public-private partnerships. And we will finish with a deep dive into the experience of a small rural community that furnishes – an excellent example of how the public and private sectors working together can build a great community and an inclusive and advanced workforce. 

Difficult To Choose

Christopher will present at several panels, as part of the Economic Development Track Blue Ribbon Panel, which kicks off the economic development track on Tuesday, May 1st at 3.p.m. central time. He'll also be stepping in to other conversations to answer questions and propose them to some of the other experts on hand.

Broadband Communities Summits are known for the broad range of discussion issues:

Spring is the season for the Broadband Communities Summit. This year, attendees will be able to shake off the cold weather in Austin, Texas from April 30th - May 3rd at the Renaissance Hotel. The theme is FIBER: Putting Your Gigs To Work; online registration is open.

Organizers are still finalizing the agenda as they add interesting content to panels and workshops, but you can view it as it develops here. 

CLIC On It

Note that on the afternoon of day one, the Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) will present a special preconference session. Their experts, including our Christopher Mitchell, will discuss the need for local authority as it relates to local broadband infrastructure. There will also be a discussion that looks into the public-private partnership between Westminster, Maryland, and Ting Internet, an arrangement that reveals shared risk and reward.

We will continue to help members of CLIC and our allies to be as effective as possible in opposing barriers to local Internet choice.  Emphasizing the positive, we will showcase successful local initiatives reflecting the benefits of local control for the community’s economic and broadband future. We will discuss the factual and legal arguments that work best in refuting the new wave of objections to community broadband and public-private partnerships. And we will finish with a deep dive into the experience of a small rural community that furnishes – an excellent example of how the public and private sectors working together can build a great community and an inclusive and advanced workforce. 

Variety

Christopher will be presenting at several other panels, including as part of the Economic Development Track Blue Ribbon Panel, which kicks off the economic development track on Tuesday, May 1st at 3.p.m. central time. 

As with every Broadband Communities Summit, there will be a wide range of topics and guests. Look for discussions on:

"Fiber For The New Economy" will be the theme of  Broadband Communities' annual regional conference which is scheduled from Oct. 18th to 20th in Minneapolis.

The conference will explore the hottest developments in fiber and economic development with panel discussions and workshop sessions on such topics as Google Fiber, incumbent and other provider deployments, and public-private projects, according to Jim Baller, the conference’s economic development chairman.

There will also be sessions about developments in “major verticals,” including health care, education and energy, adds Baller, who is also co-founder and president of the Coalition for Local Internet Choice. 

The conference will focus on broadband activities and projects in primarily Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana, as well as western Ontario and Manitoba. 

The Blandin Foundation is assisting Broadband Communities with content and conference planning, a move that means the Minnesota non-profit will have a much smaller fall event of its own, said Bernadine Joselyn, Blandin Foundation director of public policy and engagement. Blandin’s fall conference is scheduled for Sept. 13th and 14th in Duluth.  For further information, go to the event website.

Key facts on the Broadband Communities’ Conference

What: “Fiber for The New Economy”

Where: Radisson Blu Downtown Hotel, 35 S. Seventh St., Minneapolis, Minnesota  55402.

When: Oct. 18-20, 2016

Register online for the conference at the event website. Check back in the future with the main event page for more as the agenda is set.

Since we alerted our audience to the shenanigans surrounding Missouri’s HB 2078, a couple of other news medias have picked up the story and reported on the dramatic end of session climax. As we rest in the glow of the denouement, we want to provide a follow up for those who may have missed the final outcome and offer some words from Jim Baller, who was deep in the trenches.

Here's What Happened...

If you have not yet heard, the language from HB 2078 was ultimately not adopted by the Missouri State Legislature. Whew. Readers probably recall that, when HB 2078 stalled on its own, the author of HB 2078, Rep. Lyndall Fraker slipped some of the more damaging language into SB 765, a traffic ticket bill that had nothing to do with municipal networks.

Fortunately, advocates of municipal networks had been able to educate Members who were part of the appropriate conference committee. Those elected officials decided to remove the language from SB 765 before final passage. Anti-muni Members also attempted to amend the language into a third bill, HB 1912, which concerned county buildings. The sponsor of the amendment then turned around and chose to strip out the language that began in HB 2078 from his amendment, once he learned that its inclusion would have sparked a filibuster and killed the entire amendment.

A Tough Fight That Isn't Over

Jim Baller, the nation’s leading telecommunications attorney who was directly involved with defeating the bill told Communications Daily:

As communities across the country realize the big corporate providers may never bring the kind of connectivity they need, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are sprouting up everywhere. A new report by Joanne Hovis, Marc Schulhof, Jim Baller, and Ashley Stelfox, takes a look at the issues facing local governments and their private sector partners.

Interjection from Christopher Mitchell: Partnerships are emphatically not sprouting up everywhere. To be more correct, enthusiasm around the idea of partnerships is sprouting up in many places. But compared to the hundreds of municipal networks currently in operation, we could maybe name ten partnerhips in existence today.

The Emerging World of Broadband Public-Private Partnerships: A Business Strategy and Legal Guide examines the practical considerations when investigating PPPs for better connectivity. The report was published by the Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC) and the Benton Foundation. 

The Benton Foundation sums up the three models explored in the report:

Private investment, public facilitation – The model focuses not on a public sector investment, but on modest measures the public sector can take to enable or encourage greater private sector investment. Google Fiber is the most prominent example, but there is significant interest among smaller companies

Private execution, public funding – This model, which involves a substantial amount of public investment, is a variation on the traditional municipal ownership model for broadband infrastructure—but with private rather than public sector execution.

Shared investment and risk – In this model, localities and private partners find creative ways to share the capital, operating, and maintenance costs of a broadband network.

The authors also share expertise on a range of legal topics that often arise when working with a private sector partner. They share their years of experience with matters such as confirmation of authority at state and local levels, project planning, and common issues related to negotiating the agreement.

Nine months ago, the FCC voted to peel back laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that eliminate local authority and discourage expansion of broadband investment. As was expected, both states filed appeals and those appeals were consolidated for review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit covering Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

It has been a long and arduous journey for the parties, their attorneys, and local authority advocates. In order to help MuniNetworks.org readers stay informed of the parties and their arguments, we gathered together a collection of resources related to the original Order and the Appeal. 

• Memorandum Opinion and Order of the FCC adopted February 26, 2015 [PDF]: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-25A1.pdf
• FCC Opinion and Order Striking Down Local Authority Limits in TN and NC: Highlights
• Podcast with Jim Baller on the decision, Episode 143 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Downloads of briefs are available as attachments here.

Is your community considering a public private partnership to improve connectivity for businesses and residents? Will you be attending the Broadband Communities Economic Development Conference in Lexington this September? If you answered 'yes' to those two questions, you should attend CLIC's half-day event on Friday, September 18th.

Spend the morning breakfasting with telecommunication attorney Jim Baller and Joanne Hovis from CLIC along with Maura Corbett, CEO of Glen Echo Group and Heather Gold, CEO of FTTH Council Americas.

The rest of the agenda from a CLIC email invitation:

An Extensive CLIC Paper on the Key Business and Legal Issues in Public-Private Partnerships :

Moderator: Jim Baller - President, CLIC

Speakers:

• Joanne Hovis - CEO, CLIC
• Ashley Stelfox - Associate Legal Counsel, CLIC

The Private Sector’s Perspective :

Speakers:

• Elliot Noss - CEO, Ting Fiber Internet
• Bob Nichols - President, Declaration Networks Group
• Levi Dinkla – Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, iTV-3
• Steve Biggerstaff – Founding President, Director & Advisor, Metronet
• Nicholas Hann – Senior Managing Director, Macquarie Capital/Macquarie Group Ltd.

The Public Sector’s Perspective :

Moderator: Catharine Rice - Project Director, CLIC

Speakers:

• Robert Wack - President, City Council, Westminster, MD
• Scott Shapiro - Senior Advisor, The Mayor’s Office, City of Lexington, Kentucky
• Jon Gant – Director, UC2B

We were saddened to learn of Scott DeGarmo's passing this past week and, like many others who knew him and his work, want to pay tribute to his many contributions.

Scott was the CEO of Broadband Communities, a valuable resource that policy makers, industry chiefs, and community leaders depend on for the most recent developments in the world of advanced communications networks. Scott molded the magazine into a leading publication for readers and began the practice of bringing them together at an annual conference. He took it to a higher level by raising awareness, building coalitions, and creating possibilities.

Scott will be missed by many who care about connecting the world. You can share memories from others who knew Scott at the Broadband Communities Tribute Page. Thank you, Scott. Below is a tribute that Jim Baller has shared via the Coalition for Local Internet Choice.

Scott DeGarmo, CEO of Broadband Communities, passed away this weekend.  He was an ardent and invaluable supporter of CLIC and a champion of local choice.  He published and promoted CLIC’s articles on the Broadband Communities website and made sure that CLIC had a prominent role in Broadband Communities events, including the upcoming conference in Lexington.  We will send out more information on the Lexington conference later in the day, but first, we wanted to share a tribute to Scott from CLIC’s president, Jim Baller. 

A TRIBUTE TO SCOTT DEGARMO 

On Saturday, August 15, 2015, Scott DeGarmo died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Riverdale, NY, after exchanging goodbyes with his wife and daughters.  Scott was a giant in our field and a dear friend for many years.