For the upcoming weeks I’m working on a County-by-County look at the State of Broadband in MN. My hope is to feature a county a day (in alphabetical order). In November, Connect Minnesota released their final report on broadband availability. Here is how Kittson County stacked up:
- Household Density: 1.8
- Number of Households: 1,986
- Percentage serviced (without mobile): 43.08%
- Percentage serviced (with mobile): 43.08%
Kittson County is served, at least in part, by Wikstrom Telephone; they received ARRA funding; in 2012 they celebrated installation of fiber to Wikstrom customers. Earlier this year, Wikstrom received more through the Minnesota Broadband Fund to expand that network..
Wikstrom Telephone, Kittson, Marshall, Roseau Broadband Extension. Awarded $425,000 to bring fiber-to-the-home service to 73 unserved and 43 underserved locations in Kittson (15 premises), Marshall (50 premises) and Roseau (51 premises) counties. The total project costs are $943,827; the remaining $518,827 (55 percent local match) will be provided by Wikstrom.
Community and Economic Development Impact: The project leverages Wikstrom’s nearly 1,200 mile middle-mile and distribution fiber facilities to serve the grant project areas. Among other improvements in community and economic development capacity, broadband connectivity in these remote areas of northwestern Minnesota will enable more effective teleworking, which creates more and new employment opportunities for households. It also opens up additional labor force capacity for employers regardless of location.
Now 15 homes doesn’t seem like a lot – but frankly reaching the most remote areas is a game of onsie-twosies. Kittson County isn’t an area I know well. I got a flavor for the area at the last MN Broadband Task Force meeting when John Linnell mentioned that Kittson County has no stop lights – but as he pointed out at the meeting, they need for broadband to support healthcare in the community.
So there’s a recognized need and a push from a local provider and progress is being made – but they still sit with less than half the county getting service.
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 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.