Chris Mitchell recently interviewed Mark Erickson and Cindy Gerholz from the http://www.rsfiber.coop/ project on what’s happening these days. They talk a bit about the history of the project and the current situation. A brief history – Renville and Sibley Counties have been working for more than five years to get fiber to the premise to local residents. They plan on covering city and farm folk – a big deal when some of the rural passings come in at $10,000 per farm. They looked at a Joint Powers Board, which didn’t work out.

Now they are looking at a private cooperative model approach. They have 10 cities and 17 townships on board. They want to get a loan from the local governments to offset the budgeted $55 million price tag.

You can hear the whole report on the Muninetworks website.