In November, Connect Minnesota released their final report on broadband availability. Here is how Brown County stacked up:
- Household Density: 17.4
- Number of Households: 10,782
- Percentage serviced (without mobile): 89.39%
- Percentage serviced (with mobile): 85.39%
Yesterday I looked at Blue Earth County, which is not too far from Brown County. I compared Blue Earth to a Swiss Cheese topography. Brown is similar – only more like a donut. The western half of the county (near New Ulm) is well served. The eastern half is served near Sleepy Eye – otherwise it’s a sea of red (unserved) and purple (underserved) on the map.
There are a couple of independent providers in the area. I know AT&T upgraded their network in the area last summer. I know that New Ulm has done broadband adoption training especially with local businesses (with support from local providers) in the last few years.
Brown County is not far from Sibley and Renville Counties where a big push is happening to focus on county/regional wide fiber solutions. Looking at the map, I suspect that Brown County has hit a plateau at 85 percent coverage where broadband is available where there is a market case and not where there isn’t. One way to increase the odds of covering the less profitable areas is to lift the lens higher and amortize based on averaging out the costs and benefits to a larger area. I’ll write more about Sibley and Renville Counties as those counties come up – but it does seem like one promising model in the works now.
My hope is that these county-specific posts will help policy makers and county residents understand where they stand in terms of broadband access. Assuming it might get forwarded to folks who don’t eat and sleep broadband I wanted to provide a little background on broadband to help set the stage…
How does Minnesota define broadband?
The 2015 broadband goal for Minnesota is ubiquitous access to speeds of 10-20 Mbps (down) and 5-10 Mbps (up). These numbers actually reflect 6-10 Mbps up because Minnesota goals are a little out of sync with standard federal measurements. Connect MN measured access with and without including mobile access as it is often considered a slightly different service, in part because of the data caps involved with wireless services. (Data caps can make wireless an expensive primary broadband connection – especially for a household.)
Learn how the other Minnesota counties rank.
How is Minnesota working to promote border to border broadband?
In 2014, the Legislature approved $20 million for broadband grants to support broadband expansion in Minnesota. You can find a list of applicants online. The hope is the broadband sector is that more funding will be made available in 2015.