Hello! My name is Becky and I’m a first-time blogger on Blandin on Broadband. Today I was doing a quick scan of my daily email from the folks at Baller Herbst when I saw an article from vnunet.com titled Fibre-to-the-home reaches one million Europeans. The story includes reference to the fact that “the 150 municipal networks serving these customers tend not to be owned by conventional telecoms operators, but by utilities or local authorities.”

This is true in Grand Rapids as well. Last summer I watched eagerly as Paul Bunyan Telephone Cooperative brought the capacity for bandwidth beyond my wildest dreams through a trench in my yard and up to my house. Paul Bunyan Telephone has served Northern Minnesota for over 50 years. Today, the cooperative offers local & long distance phone service, internet service including high speed service and all-digital television. Their “Connect Grand Rapids” fiber project is on schedule for completion by May 2007 although word from the Paul Bunyan office is that they’ll be fully operational before then.

I can’t help but wonder if Paul Bunyan’s access to public funds made the difference in their ability to bring fiber to Grand Rapids and Cohasset, our neighbor to the west. And I wonder if this could be further evidence that infrastructure projects of this kind need to be supported by the kind of innovative financing that public-private partnerships provide.