Statewide broadband gets business backing

Businesses in Minnesota are getting behind a legislative effort to make high-speed Internet available for all Minnesotans by 2015.

Representatives from such heavy-hitter corporations as Northwest Airlines and legal publisher Thomson West showed up at Eagan's city hall last week to testify in favor of high-speed Internet, otherwise known as broadband, before a meeting of the House Telecommunications Regulation and Infrastructure Division.

The committee is mulling a bill sponsored by Rep. Sandy Masin, DFL-Eagan, which aims at achieving broadband statewide by 2015.

At least one Republican on the committee is concerned about the government getting too involved in creating a broadband system.

And no one can predict the bill's chances at passing into law; one key player, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, has not yet indicated his preference.

But during the committee meeting on Oct. 17, testifiers talked about business advantages of such a system, like how employees can use broadband to adapt to today's changing work environment, which includes working from home.

Rick King, chief operating officer of Eagan-based Thomson West, told the legislative panel that the United States lags behind other nations like Japan and Sweden when it comes to the availability of broadband.

Because businesses need to handle ever larger amounts of data in the course of their normal operations, King said, Minnesota needs broadband to keep and attract high-end businesses.

"It has to do with job growth, wages, property values and recruitment of companies," King said.

Tamara Rath, director of infrastructure and network communications for Eagan-based Northwest Airlines, said airline crew members can't access training manuals from home unless they have the Internet capability.

"Increased bandwidth would allow all applications to be accessed from the employee's residence," Rath said.

In the 2007 legislative session, Masin introduced legislation that sets the policy goal of all Minnesotans having access to 1 gigabit-per-second of broadband by 2015. The bill was tabled during the 2007 session for more study. Masin said she will work to get the bill passed when the Legislature convenes Feb. 12.

"The bottom line with this bill is we want the state to have a plan. We're not picking winners and losers," Masin said.

Rep. Mike Beard, R-Shakopee, a member of the committee, said the 2008 session will have a full agenda including a bonding bill to fund construction projects. He said he couldn't predict the broadband bill's chances of passage, and he hasn't heard anything yet from Pawlenty's office.

Beard believes the bill raises difficult questions about the government's role in fostering the development of technology. A particularly thorny issue is the extent to which the marketplace brings broadband to the public versus the state actually creating a broadband system. Beard drew a historical analogy with the development of railroads in the 19th century.

"Do we want to actually grant the right-of-way and say, 'Everybody have at it?' Or do we want to lay the rails?" Beard said in a subsequent interview.

The bill has raised the eyebrows of the cable industry, which is concerned about the large costs of putting in broadband connections statewide.

The substance of Wednesday's discussion mostly stayed away from criticizing cable companies, which was to the liking of Mike Martin, executive director of the Minnesota Cable Communications Association.

In an interview after the meeting, Martin said that cable companies will be involved in the process as the bill is discussed at the Capitol in 2008. He noted that some users are comfortable with dial-up while others prefer broadband.

"It's important to stress that one size does not fit all," Martin said.

Martin said people from different income levels and geographic parts of the state who don't have access to high-speed Internet should be given priority in the discussion.

Also, a system that maps the areas where high-speed Internet isn't available is another step in the right direction, he said.

"We can't complain about what we've got until we know what we've got," Martin said.

State Rep. Brita Sailer, DFL-Park Rapids, a co-sponsor of the bill, is concerned about the lack of high-speed Internet service in her sparsely populated northwest Minnesota district.

Residents of her district are often limited to slower dial-up Internet connections. She worries that small businesses that need to send or receive large amounts of data won't have the power to compete in the global marketplace.

"If you don't live in town, you're in trouble. You don't have access," Sailer said.

Sailer said she's seeing local communities try to bring high-speed Internet to their residents. She said she hopes state lawmakers will join their efforts by passing the bill.

"I think it's going to be driven by the needs people have in the state, whether it's for business, for education, for public safety," Sailer said.