Blandin Foundation recommendations to the Broadband Opportunity Council

The Blandin Foundation submitted a formal response to the federal request for input to the Broadband Opportunity Council. The Blandin Foundation recommends enabling, encouraging, and engaging in collaboration across sectors and levels of government. Additionally, to support and spur rural broadband cooperatives and to continue efforts to spur adoption and increase sophistication of use. Specifically, Blandin Foundation supports cooperatives because:

• Building a business case for broadband investment in unserved or underserved areas of Minnesota is very challenging for investor-owned providers.
• Cooperatives are member-owned and can be more patient investors with delayed or minimal ROI requirements.
• Community and economic development benefits derived from broadband investments, both the intrinsic values and the increased community sustainability, are highly valued by locally owned cooperatives.
• Establishment of cooperatives may be less objectionable to those who oppose government broadband networks.
• There is an established history of public-private partnerships between government units and cooperatives, such as Arrowhead, CTC, Farmers Mutual, and Federated. Returns from successful partnerships remain in the community.