Aaron Brown is a writer, teacher and radio guy from the Iron Range. (I had the great fortune to see him and the rest of the Great Northern Radio Show last week when they toured to the Twin Cities). Arron has written about broadband in the past and I’ve highlighted his work here – he is the voice on the frontlines!
Over the weekend he aired a great story on The Little Town with Blazingly Fast Internet. It’s the story of Quitman, Mississippi – Arron does a great compare and contrast story…
But two things about Quitman, located in Clarke County in east central Mississippi on the Alabama border, reminded me of our Northern Minnesota counties: aging demographics and crippling job losses from a single industry just a generation ago — in their case, textiles; in ours mining and logging. It’s the age-old challenge: how do you pass the torch from a large older population used to one way of doing things, to a younger one that needs new tools to succeed.
Eddie Fulton, first elected in 2008, was the first mayor of Quitman to ever use a computer. Having retired from a career as marketing manager for Sears Roebuck, Fulton immediately recognized the economic importance of high speed internet once he started working with local businesses trying to expand.
Quitman worked with C-Spire to get Gig access to his town – but Arron points out that there are several ways to get access…
Quitman is an example of how broadband expansion can be led by the private sector. Google Fiber’s expansion to medium and larger cities is another example. Still other popular broadband projects have been led by cities and states. Chattanooga, Tennessee, for instance — under its former mayor and current Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker— scored huge economic growth with a high speed municipal broadband effort. Another approach combines public investment in infrastructure with private internet service delivery. That’s the model folks in Itasca County, Minnesota, are pursuing as part of their Connect Itasca initiative. One thing Fulton noticed, however, is that once C-Spire launched its gigabyte service to Quitman, the local cable company and AT&T both quickly responded by adding their own infrastructure.
It’s an inspiring story – one that should spark even greater interest in working for better broadband in Minnesota. Because the one thing about broadband is tears down barriers for competition as well as improving access to education and health care. That means the Iron Range is competing with Quitman – but right not they have better tools.
This is a nice story. C-Spire has a very interesting approach in getting communities involved in building support for broadband and rewarding those that do. I am a bit surprised that I could not find similar stories on Brown’s blog about Paul Bunyan Communications’ Gigazone broadband deployment in northern Minnesota which has been featured here on the Blandin on Broadband blog.
PB is bringing these services across the countryside of rural northern Minnesota, not just in towns. Over time, PB has been expanding its footprint in all directions. For example, Trout Lake Township, just east of Grand Rapids, worked hard to build community support for broadband and PB responded to their request. Fiber construction is scheduled for this summer. PB is also expanding over in the Park Rapids area.
The Connect Itasca group continues to work to build community support, similar to that demonstrated by Trout Laker, across other unserved areas of Itasca County hoping that PB or another provider will extend services.