[Music]
[Music]
so in 1950 this group of rural farmers
and business leaders they had a problem
problem was that while telephone service
was available in the big cities and in
small towns the big phone company of the
day would not extend their
infrastructure out to their rural areas
so they work together to solve this
problem
they formed a telephone cooperative you
know they had to invest their own money
and some of them took out personal
mortgages and they made it happen
you know but they took this risk not for
future potential gain financial gain it
was all about getting a critical
communication service to their rural
areas and to be a part of technology as
it’s progressing you know this really
hasn’t changed today obviously it’s not
telephones we’re talking about anymore
but it’s effective internet access and
instead it’s still though it still boils
down to getting critical services out to
those that need it no matter where they
live this cooperative philosophy that is
working together to create and provide a
service rather than an orientation to
profit on shared values rather than
share value really lends itself very
well when the economics are tough I mean
if there’s money to be made for profit
businesses will do it and that’s great
but in rural America where population
densities are low and construction costs
are high
it’s coops really that are moving the
needle on broadband availability so
quite often I hear South Korea held up
as an example of phenomenal internet
access and ensure it’s true but keep in
mind there are 27,000 people per square
mile in Seoul South Korea I mean heck if
you’re that dense you may as well just
steal your neighbor’s Wi-Fi right
problem solved
but in Beltrami County that number is
seven so clearly the economics are a
little different and the technical
challenges are not quite on par but but
don’t get me wrong I don’t bring that up
as an excuse of why it’s why
stuff why we can’t do it actually I just
mean it means that we need to think
harder and we need to embrace creative
philosophies like cooperatives to solve
this problem you know while the density
those seven people in per square mile in
Beltrami County is less you know they
need the Internet as as much as their
urban counterparts and actually I would
argue that they need it more they need
it more because they rely on things like
telehealth that internet-enabled health
care service that can be delivered no
matter your where you live your
proximity to a healthcare institution or
how about education for education the
sum of human knowledge really lives out
there on the web somewhere right and for
job opportunities and economic
development the internet not only
connects people to opportunities in a
large part creates those very
opportunities and even government and
participation in democracy now has
internet as a component of that so to
step you back a little bit the
Communications Act of 1934 really built
a foundation of telephone regulation and
rules of government and within that
regulation was this philosophy that was
carved into US policy called universal
service and it recognized that urban and
rural we all benefit if we’re all
connected and we all can communicate as
a result of that policy and resulting
programs that they initiated telephones
went from 30 or 40 percent in the 1930s
to nearly everywhere regardless of
location so it can be done this
philosophy does work now 62 years later
the 1996 telecom act again reaffirmed
our country’s belief in this philosophy
of universal service it actually made it
stronger by expanding it to include
Internet access you know there’s a young
man his name is Kosta grammatic he
founded an organization called a human
right org and it’s a it’s a fabulous
organization you should check it out but
their goal is to get Internet for
everyone they think it’s that important
across the globe
but he has a kind of a fun interesting
twist on a famous proverb he says give a
man a fish you feed him for a day teach
a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime but give the man the internet
and he can teach himself out of fish or
anything else he wants to know not to
mention he can binge watch Game of
Thrones but you know that’s not hardly
the point today so if we agree that
having effective internet access is
critically important to everyone
especially in rural areas then how do we
build a network to connect everybody
what technologies you would use how do
we pay for such a network and finally
what future are we trying to build this
network for well to get at that I want
you to go back with me a little bit and
think about how do you connect to the
internet do you remember this sound wait
for it hmm you’re all loving that right
fond memories yeah that meant you were
screaming along at 14.4 28.8 kilobits
per second just hang on right but to put
that print perspective our gigabit
service that we offer on our fiber
network is 70,000 times faster than
those early modems made always feel like
it but it’s true and it’s at that point
you know your internet experience
whether it is that early dial-up
experience the early dreaded dial-up or
is that mass of dusty cables that’s
behind your computer at your house or
your business or maybe today it’s Wi-Fi
right how you connect throughout all
those internet experiences it’s been
your internet service provider that has
been the throttle kind of to your
Internet experience well now with
gigabit type services that’s no longer
the case and in fact it can be that
unless your computer is relatively new
that gigabit service may be faster than
that network connection and you’re in
your computer or your Wi-Fi service
or even that distant website that’s
trying to send you information and you
know what I think that’s exactly how it
should be Internet service providers
should not be the determiner of what is
your capabilities are you know what’s
fast enough what’s good enough for you
what are you capable of in fact it’s
quite the quite the opposite we should
be the enabler the enabler of whatever
you can dream up today or in the future
yet today policymakers and ISPs alike
they’re sitting around trying to decide
what’s good enough for you what’s fast
enough and they do it a lot of times
setting the bar really low for economic
reasons you know they’re trying to
leverage their existing older
infrastructure and and not
state-of-the-art technologies it’s
short-term solutions are thinking of and
we just can’t think that way so let’s
take a moment and talk about the
different types of network technologies
that can be used to connect you to the
Internet there really are three
different types of ways that
communications can travel between you
and the Internet there is data can be
transferred via electricity over a
copper wire data can be transferred via
radio waves and a wireless connection
and finally data can be transmitted by
way of light over a fiber optic
connection so first let’s talk about
copper now there’s two types of copper
connections that are typically used in
infrastructure today one is called DSL
you’re probably familiar and DSL uses
twisted pairs of copper wires to
transmit that data the other copper
connection that is quite prevalent is
coax networks typically from the cable
operators both of these copper
technologies are decades old and but
they’ve served as well right they’ve
really provided us an initial experience
with the internet but unfortunately both
copper technologies suffer from signal
loss distance limitations and speed
limitations and if you think about it
although they keep making progress you
know how many more bits you can squeeze
down that copper wire this technology
really using copper for communications
dates back to all the way to 1876 when
Alexander Graham Bell invented the
internet
sorry he wishes the invented the
internet invented the telephone that
would have been awesome so so what about
radio waves now radio waves uh meaning a
wireless connection are very prevalent
right there’s lots of wireless
technologies one is satellite you hear
about satellite internet
unfortunately satellite internet is it’s
really only used in rural areas where
there isn’t a wired infrastructure to
take advantage of mainly because of the
typically is slow it’s a little more
expensive and if you think about it that
satellite you’re trying to beam up to is
22,000 miles away so it’s no wonder that
speeds suffer particularly upload speeds
as well as the responsiveness or what we
would call latency really suffers with
satellite but how about the other type
of wireless one that you’re you really
think enough is probably in your pocket
right now right it’s cellular that
technology whether you’re talking 3G or
4G LTE or in the next few years 5g that
technology is really revolutionized the
Internet experience bringing mobility
really cool devices in a tremendous
number of applications but keep in mind
when you think about wireless and what
can that Wireless radio wave type
connection deliver for you that Wireless
call is our connection is really only
wireless between your handset and the
nearest tower from that point on in the
network especially today as capacities
increase those networks to depend on
fiber fiber optic network connect most
of the towers now and certainly will in
the future so Wireless like copper has
challenges with speed and capacity and
although like copper they’re improving
those all the time ultimately they still
suffer from capacity and speed
limitations so let’s talk about fiber
optic networks as you probably know
these networks leverage fine hairlike
fibers of glass right and across those
glass fibers transmits light and those
beams of light can travel great
distances securely reliably and actually
they use less power
the other real advantage of fiber-optic
networks is that it could be a symmetric
service meaning that your upload speeds
and experience can be every bit as fast
as your download speeds and this is
critical we this is a big deal because
if you think about your internet
experience downloading is consuming
whereas uploading that’s producing
that’s innovating that’s contributing
content so our networks really have to
be able to provide that great upload
experience for those innovators for
those producers so really if you think
about it fiber if you’re going to build
a network for the future fiber optic
networks are really the only technology
choice now on the cost side in the next
ten years the FCC is going to allocate
fifty billion dollars to improve
infrastructure in the United States and
that sounds great
however they’re unfortunate they’re
allowing that investment to be made on
existing aging infrastructure only
barely moving the needle in terms of
speeds and capabilities they’re not
building for the future they’re not
demanding that it be built for the
future you know again it’s not for
regulators to decide what’s good enough
it shouldn’t be what’s fast enough
however I’ve heard legislators the very
legislators that are responsible for our
state and national broadband policies
I’ve heard them say things like well you
know I’ve got six Meg down and one Meg
up and that’s good enough for me and I
do a little web browsing and that’s
great you know what I talked to my
neighbor and they thought that was fast
enough to and that can’t be how we
decide our policy that can’t be how we
dream the future we need to think bigger
so now when I think of thinking big I
think of sir arthur c clarke he was a
radar specialist with the royal air
force in the in world war ii he also was
a mathematician of physicist inventor
kind of a futurist but you may know him
best as the author of 2001 a Space
Odyssey which he wrote in 1968 he also
had a little sense of humor he would say
the best proof that there is intelligent
life in outer space
is the fact that it never came here so I
like that one in a 1974 interview arthur
c clarke almost perfectly described the
internet nearly 20 years before it was a
reality he talked about this thing like
a council that you would have in your
house he imagines and it would have a TV
like screen and it would have a keyboard
and all of this would have some
connections so that you could get at
information whether you’re talking
theater reservations or bank statements
but what was most interesting and
compelling about his vision is the
impact that he thought it would have for
all of us he said and I’ll quote will
take it as much for granted as we take
the telephone and we won’t have to be
stuck in the cities he said his words
not mine
we can live out the country or wherever
we like and carry on complete
interaction you know it’s visionaries
like arthur c clarke and others like him
that proved that to really demonstrate
real progress we have to think out of
the box we have to think big he said any
sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic
well you know that this can be magic if
we do it right if we think to the future
instead of the past if we think big
instead of incrementally this can happen
but I think we need to expect fiber
networks we need to expect gigabit
speeds and beyond let’s not settle we
can do this if there is the will like
our founders had at our cooperative the
dollars are there if we invest them the
right way on the right technology and
for the right reasons you know let’s not
just get by let’s think big so that we
enable those that follow to dream of
whatever is next and let’s do it for
everyone
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
so in 1950 this group of rural farmers
and business leaders they had a problem
problem was that while telephone service
was available in the big cities and in
small towns the big phone company of the
day would not extend their
infrastructure out to their rural areas
so they work together to solve this
problem
they formed a telephone cooperative you
know they had to invest their own money
and some of them took out personal
mortgages and they made it happen
you know but they took this risk not for
future potential gain financial gain it
was all about getting a critical
communication service to their rural
areas and to be a part of technology as
it’s progressing you know this really
hasn’t changed today obviously it’s not
telephones we’re talking about anymore
but it’s effective internet access and
instead it’s still though it still boils
down to getting critical services out to
those that need it no matter where they
live this cooperative philosophy that is
working together to create and provide a
service rather than an orientation to
profit on shared values rather than
share value really lends itself very
well when the economics are tough I mean
if there’s money to be made for profit
businesses will do it and that’s great
but in rural America where population
densities are low and construction costs
are high
it’s coops really that are moving the
needle on broadband availability so
quite often I hear South Korea held up
as an example of phenomenal internet
access and ensure it’s true but keep in
mind there are 27,000 people per square
mile in Seoul South Korea I mean heck if
you’re that dense you may as well just
steal your neighbor’s Wi-Fi right
problem solved
but in Beltrami County that number is
seven so clearly the economics are a
little different and the technical
challenges are not quite on par but but
don’t get me wrong I don’t bring that up
as an excuse of why it’s why
stuff why we can’t do it actually I just
mean it means that we need to think
harder and we need to embrace creative
philosophies like cooperatives to solve
this problem you know while the density
those seven people in per square mile in
Beltrami County is less you know they
need the Internet as as much as their
urban counterparts and actually I would
argue that they need it more they need
it more because they rely on things like
telehealth that internet-enabled health
care service that can be delivered no
matter your where you live your
proximity to a healthcare institution or
how about education for education the
sum of human knowledge really lives out
there on the web somewhere right and for
job opportunities and economic
development the internet not only
connects people to opportunities in a
large part creates those very
opportunities and even government and
participation in democracy now has
internet as a component of that so to
step you back a little bit the
Communications Act of 1934 really built
a foundation of telephone regulation and
rules of government and within that
regulation was this philosophy that was
carved into US policy called universal
service and it recognized that urban and
rural we all benefit if we’re all
connected and we all can communicate as
a result of that policy and resulting
programs that they initiated telephones
went from 30 or 40 percent in the 1930s
to nearly everywhere regardless of
location so it can be done this
philosophy does work now 62 years later
the 1996 telecom act again reaffirmed
our country’s belief in this philosophy
of universal service it actually made it
stronger by expanding it to include
Internet access you know there’s a young
man his name is Kosta grammatic he
founded an organization called a human
right org and it’s a it’s a fabulous
organization you should check it out but
their goal is to get Internet for
everyone they think it’s that important
across the globe
but he has a kind of a fun interesting
twist on a famous proverb he says give a
man a fish you feed him for a day teach
a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime but give the man the internet
and he can teach himself out of fish or
anything else he wants to know not to
mention he can binge watch Game of
Thrones but you know that’s not hardly
the point today so if we agree that
having effective internet access is
critically important to everyone
especially in rural areas then how do we
build a network to connect everybody
what technologies you would use how do
we pay for such a network and finally
what future are we trying to build this
network for well to get at that I want
you to go back with me a little bit and
think about how do you connect to the
internet do you remember this sound wait
for it hmm you’re all loving that right
fond memories yeah that meant you were
screaming along at 14.4 28.8 kilobits
per second just hang on right but to put
that print perspective our gigabit
service that we offer on our fiber
network is 70,000 times faster than
those early modems made always feel like
it but it’s true and it’s at that point
you know your internet experience
whether it is that early dial-up
experience the early dreaded dial-up or
is that mass of dusty cables that’s
behind your computer at your house or
your business or maybe today it’s Wi-Fi
right how you connect throughout all
those internet experiences it’s been
your internet service provider that has
been the throttle kind of to your
Internet experience well now with
gigabit type services that’s no longer
the case and in fact it can be that
unless your computer is relatively new
that gigabit service may be faster than
that network connection and you’re in
your computer or your Wi-Fi service
or even that distant website that’s
trying to send you information and you
know what I think that’s exactly how it
should be Internet service providers
should not be the determiner of what is
your capabilities are you know what’s
fast enough what’s good enough for you
what are you capable of in fact it’s
quite the quite the opposite we should
be the enabler the enabler of whatever
you can dream up today or in the future
yet today policymakers and ISPs alike
they’re sitting around trying to decide
what’s good enough for you what’s fast
enough and they do it a lot of times
setting the bar really low for economic
reasons you know they’re trying to
leverage their existing older
infrastructure and and not
state-of-the-art technologies it’s
short-term solutions are thinking of and
we just can’t think that way so let’s
take a moment and talk about the
different types of network technologies
that can be used to connect you to the
Internet there really are three
different types of ways that
communications can travel between you
and the Internet there is data can be
transferred via electricity over a
copper wire data can be transferred via
radio waves and a wireless connection
and finally data can be transmitted by
way of light over a fiber optic
connection so first let’s talk about
copper now there’s two types of copper
connections that are typically used in
infrastructure today one is called DSL
you’re probably familiar and DSL uses
twisted pairs of copper wires to
transmit that data the other copper
connection that is quite prevalent is
coax networks typically from the cable
operators both of these copper
technologies are decades old and but
they’ve served as well right they’ve
really provided us an initial experience
with the internet but unfortunately both
copper technologies suffer from signal
loss distance limitations and speed
limitations and if you think about it
although they keep making progress you
know how many more bits you can squeeze
down that copper wire this technology
really using copper for communications
dates back to all the way to 1876 when
Alexander Graham Bell invented the
internet
sorry he wishes the invented the
internet invented the telephone that
would have been awesome so so what about
radio waves now radio waves uh meaning a
wireless connection are very prevalent
right there’s lots of wireless
technologies one is satellite you hear
about satellite internet
unfortunately satellite internet is it’s
really only used in rural areas where
there isn’t a wired infrastructure to
take advantage of mainly because of the
typically is slow it’s a little more
expensive and if you think about it that
satellite you’re trying to beam up to is
22,000 miles away so it’s no wonder that
speeds suffer particularly upload speeds
as well as the responsiveness or what we
would call latency really suffers with
satellite but how about the other type
of wireless one that you’re you really
think enough is probably in your pocket
right now right it’s cellular that
technology whether you’re talking 3G or
4G LTE or in the next few years 5g that
technology is really revolutionized the
Internet experience bringing mobility
really cool devices in a tremendous
number of applications but keep in mind
when you think about wireless and what
can that Wireless radio wave type
connection deliver for you that Wireless
call is our connection is really only
wireless between your handset and the
nearest tower from that point on in the
network especially today as capacities
increase those networks to depend on
fiber fiber optic network connect most
of the towers now and certainly will in
the future so Wireless like copper has
challenges with speed and capacity and
although like copper they’re improving
those all the time ultimately they still
suffer from capacity and speed
limitations so let’s talk about fiber
optic networks as you probably know
these networks leverage fine hairlike
fibers of glass right and across those
glass fibers transmits light and those
beams of light can travel great
distances securely reliably and actually
they use less power
the other real advantage of fiber-optic
networks is that it could be a symmetric
service meaning that your upload speeds
and experience can be every bit as fast
as your download speeds and this is
critical we this is a big deal because
if you think about your internet
experience downloading is consuming
whereas uploading that’s producing
that’s innovating that’s contributing
content so our networks really have to
be able to provide that great upload
experience for those innovators for
those producers so really if you think
about it fiber if you’re going to build
a network for the future fiber optic
networks are really the only technology
choice now on the cost side in the next
ten years the FCC is going to allocate
fifty billion dollars to improve
infrastructure in the United States and
that sounds great
however they’re unfortunate they’re
allowing that investment to be made on
existing aging infrastructure only
barely moving the needle in terms of
speeds and capabilities they’re not
building for the future they’re not
demanding that it be built for the
future you know again it’s not for
regulators to decide what’s good enough
it shouldn’t be what’s fast enough
however I’ve heard legislators the very
legislators that are responsible for our
state and national broadband policies
I’ve heard them say things like well you
know I’ve got six Meg down and one Meg
up and that’s good enough for me and I
do a little web browsing and that’s
great you know what I talked to my
neighbor and they thought that was fast
enough to and that can’t be how we
decide our policy that can’t be how we
dream the future we need to think bigger
so now when I think of thinking big I
think of sir arthur c clarke he was a
radar specialist with the royal air
force in the in world war ii he also was
a mathematician of physicist inventor
kind of a futurist but you may know him
best as the author of 2001 a Space
Odyssey which he wrote in 1968 he also
had a little sense of humor he would say
the best proof that there is intelligent
life in outer space
is the fact that it never came here so I
like that one in a 1974 interview arthur
c clarke almost perfectly described the
internet nearly 20 years before it was a
reality he talked about this thing like
a council that you would have in your
house he imagines and it would have a TV
like screen and it would have a keyboard
and all of this would have some
connections so that you could get at
information whether you’re talking
theater reservations or bank statements
but what was most interesting and
compelling about his vision is the
impact that he thought it would have for
all of us he said and I’ll quote will
take it as much for granted as we take
the telephone and we won’t have to be
stuck in the cities he said his words
not mine
we can live out the country or wherever
we like and carry on complete
interaction you know it’s visionaries
like arthur c clarke and others like him
that proved that to really demonstrate
real progress we have to think out of
the box we have to think big he said any
sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic
well you know that this can be magic if
we do it right if we think to the future
instead of the past if we think big
instead of incrementally this can happen
but I think we need to expect fiber
networks we need to expect gigabit
speeds and beyond let’s not settle we
can do this if there is the will like
our founders had at our cooperative the
dollars are there if we invest them the
right way on the right technology and
for the right reasons you know let’s not
just get by let’s think big so that we
enable those that follow to dream of
whatever is next and let’s do it for
everyone
[Applause]
[Music]
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