City Services - Next Generation Broadband

Hastings and Dakota County Kick Off Campaign Educating the Public on Next Generation Broadband, and Why They Need It

Check out our NGBB video

With U.S. Internet traffic growth anticipated to increase at least fourteen times over what it is now by 2015*, eleven Dakota County cities and the Dakota County Community Development Agency (CDA) have launched an educational campaign about why residents and businesses need to insist on next generation broadband to meet the needs of citizens.

Mayor Paul Hicks, “The City of Hastings wants to make sure we are prepared, along with the other cities in Dakota County, for the exponential growth in bandwidth expected in coming years and explore ways our region can maintain a competitive position in terms of attracting and retaining the high wage workers that our economy is increasingly dependent upon. Moreover, this technology would serve our residents with more efficient and interactive use of the internet. To that end, the Utility Committee of the Council (Alongi*, Balsanek, Hollenbeck) will begin to review this issue in early 2010.”

The cities of Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan, Farmington, Hastings, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville, Northfield, Rosemount, South St. Paul, West St. Paul, along with the Dakota County CDA joined together to produce a short educational video, which talks about the benefits that would come from significantly higher broadband than we have today. It has been forwarded to the Chamber of Commerce, is being shown on Hastings Public Access Channel 14, and is on the City’s website (www.ci.hastings.mn.us), all in an effort to prompt citizens to learn more about the importance of next generation broadband to their future.

The release of the video comes just as the State’s Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force released its recommendations to the Governor about broadband improvements the state should make by 2015. The report was released on November 6 and states that even though there is some broadband availability today in 94% of the state, using the Federal Communications Commission’s low standard of 768 kilobits per second, when one looks at the needs of the future:

• Zero counties (in MN) currently meet or exceed the higher 2015 download speed target
• Zero counties currently meet or exceed the lower or higher 2015 upload speed targets

Dakota County is known as “A Premier County in Which to Live & Work” and next generation broadband is something that will preserve this status.

Footnotes:
* Based on 56% annual compound growth rate predicted by TeleGeography’s Global Internet
Geography Research Service
** Bret Swanson, Center for Global Innovation, and his October 24, 2008 presentation on, “The
Exaflood,” to the MN Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force. Mr. Swanson is frequently quoted
in the Wall Street Journal and one of the nation’s leading experts on data usage rates.