Last week I was luckily enough to travel with the Blanidn Foundation broadband team to several MIRC communities, including a visit to Cook County. I’ll post more information on broadband adoption in Cook County – but for today I wanted to post an update on broadband access. We started our tour of the area with a visit with Joe Butweiler at Arrowhead Electric Coop.

Arrowhead was awarded a combination grant and loan package from the USDA Rural Utilities Service (RUS) a couple of years ago – and now they are on the brink of completing construction of 700-800 miles of fiber in some of the rockiest terrain in Minnesota.

Joe talks about how and why they got into the broadband business and how they will be able to serve customers through strategic partnerships soon.