Last week the Lake County New Chronicle posted a guest commentary from Jeff Roiland, Project Manager, Lake Connections. He is clearly unhappy with the Minnesota Cable Communications Association (MCCA) and information that they have been sharing with folks in and around Lake County. I don’t know much about the situation outside of the guest commentary – so I’ll just share the first paragraph from the letter, which I think gets to the root of the allegation.

The Minnesota Cable Communications Association (MCCA), whose current President is Bill Jensen of Mediacom, is behind a public relations campaign to discredit Lake County’s fiber-optic project. The association is spending tens-of-thousands of dollars to disseminate misleading and inaccurate information, including the cost of the program and source of funding.

I always feel like one of the goals of the Blandin on Broadband blog is to provide information that would be helpful to others looking to pursue better broadband in their own communities. Working with incumbent providers will always be part of the process. In a perfect world, the community and provider work together. Collaboration and partners have been successful in many communities – but that won’t always be the case.