The rest of the Broadband 7
Posted at 11:30 AM on April 22, 2011
by Dave Peters
(4 Comments)
Filed under: Broadband
It was too long for one post, so here's the rest of the introduction to Ground Level's Broadband 7, seven Minnesota communities that are trying to figure out how to get faster access to the Internet for more of their residents.
My earlier post covered Lake, Lac qui Parle, Todd and Redwood counties. Here are three more. Like I said, these communities vary on how long they've been at this, how much they've accomplished and how they are going about it. They'll undoubtedly vary in how successful they are in getting a broadband network up and running.
Our hope is that, taken together, they will over time shine a light on how communities talk to themselves in an effort to get something done.
(We're playing around with Google Fusion maps here at MPR News, so here's a map of the Broadband 7. Click on the county to see more information about each.)
Windom -- Pacesetter expands
Construction bids are due May 5, and Dan Olsen, who directs Windomnet, would like to be out digging holes in the ground for fiber optic cable sometime in June.
Windomnet is the community-built project that has been providing high-speed access to Windom residents and businesses for six years in southwestern Minnesota's Cottonwood County. It drew nearly $13 million in federal stimulus money to expand to eight nearby towns.
So far, Olsen says, plans are proceeding smoothly, but he does share some concerns with Kevin Beyer at Farmers Mutual, which is trying to launch a project in Lac qui Parle County. If the bids Olsen expects to get May 5 and May 10 come in high because of a federal prevailing wage issue, "there'll be some head-scratching," he said.
As in Lac qui Parle, the original application for stimulus money didn't take into account the requirement under the federal Davis-Bacon Act that workers be paid "prevailing wage rates." Wages required under the ACT are higher than what officials were expecting contractors to base their bids on.
Olsen also noted that oil prices have risen and could be reflected in the plastic pipes needed for the fiber project. He'll know more when he opens bids.
Cook County -- Waiting on a typo
Residents in Cook County in far northeastern Minnesota have waited a long time and seem more excited about getting a fiber network than almost anyone else in the state. Connect Minnesota says ONLY 48 percent of the county's residents have access to non-mobile, non-satellite service of 3 megabits per second.
The county's electrical cooperative, Arrowhead Electric, won a $16 million stimulus award and hoped to be awarding a general contract to build the network by now and starting construction in June.
But a mistake on material sent to the USDA's Rural Utilities Service -- a typo, says Arrowhead's Joe Buttweiler -- sent Cook County's paperwork to the bottom of the stack. Now officials are waiting, ready to send out a request for proposals to seven potential contractors once the government releases the money.
At this point, the earliest Arrowhead could start work is July, Buttweiler says. The federal government stipulated a three-year deadline to finish projects, but Buttweiler says he's breathing a little easier because the understanding is that the clock starts ticking when Arrowhead gets the money, not when the award was made six months ago.
Sibley -- Joining forces.
Sibley County in south central Minnesota didn't get in line when federal stimulus money was awarded. Instead, local officials and residents have been talking for months in meeting after meeting about building their own fiber network that would serve every farm and city residence in Sibley County and some in neighboring Renville County.
They have gotten as far as creating a joint powers board to push the idea ahead. The board has met three times and is moving cautiously to explore bonding and to prepare a marketing effort that would involve a couple dozen more community meetings to air the idea. Here's the project Facebook page if you want to keep track.
If the effort continues, the board would ask residents to indicate their support and ultimately put the matter to a referendum that would allow it to create a utility offering Internet, phone and TV service. As elsewhere, providers already in the area have raised objections, most visibly Frontier Communications, which would be a competing provider in some locations.
The project has been spearheaded by Winthrop city administrator Mark Erickson, but the board has now voted to hire consultant Doug Dawson from CCG Consulting to advise it. The next meeting is at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 28 at the Winthrop City Hall.
You can read about the others among the Broadband 7--Lake County, Lac qui Parle County, Todd County and Redwood County--here.
And of course we have a wealth of broadband coverage on our Ground Level topic page.
Comments (4)
What will the residents think when Century Link provides internet to their exchanges? Century Link has to spend $50 Million in MN. Watch the line of division when some residents are taken care of and others are not. Why would people who have interent want to pay for a bond when they have those services already.
For more on the CenturyLink promise, go here -- http://bit.ly/gEkTG9.
It's a good question where that money will go in Minnesota. Will CenturyLink use it strategically to fight community projects as Wondering suggests? But keep in mind that's less money than some of the single-county projects being considered.
That is very true Dave, although Century Link has most of their plant in place. The only expense there would be would installing some equipment. I don't how long that would take but you certainly would think not very long to turn up internet. I've also heard Century Link has fiber in Gaylord, Qwest just never took the steps to put in internet.
The problem that CenturyLink, Frontier and other phone companies face is their last mile to the customer is made of copper and copper is a big bandwidth bottleneck, especially in rural networks. They have fiber in their middle mile but the last mile is copper. To replace the copper last mile in all of their exchanges would cost billions of dollars. Considering that CenturyLink alone just spent $18 billion to buy out Qwest it makes it fairly obvious they aren't going to be able to upgrade their copper plants, especially in the rural exchanges where density (profit) is the lowest. In fact, large ILECs like CenturyLink and Frontier (not to pick on them) are just unable to make the kind of investment in their rural exchanges that is needed to bring those networks into the 21st Century. They are caught, so to speak, in this very disruptive technology shift that fiber to the home represents. We had the Corning Fiber Optic van in our area for visits two weeks ago. The Corning rep told us that one strand of fiber has the capacity (with the right lasers) to handle 100 gigabits of bandwidth. That's roughly 70,000 T-1 lines in one strand of fiber. It's important to point out that the lasers needed to handle 100 gigabits are certainly cost prohibitive for homes at the moment. What is does is demonstrate, however, is the potential of fiber to the home networks. Current out-of-the-box fiber to the home components are easily capable of providing 100 megabits of symmetrical bandwidth to every home in a fiber network. That's why fiber to the home networks are considered future proof. The electronics on the ends of the fiber will change but the fiber in the ground will meet customer needs for decades to come. And who knows what kind of new laser technology will be developed to add more bandwidth to fiber. Our project has offered to work with the phone and cable companies in our area. We've offered to put up the money and take the financial risk. In exchange they would operate the network, keep their current customers and possibly even grow their customer base. It's called public-private partnership. To date none of the phone or cable companies are interested in such an arrangement.
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