Cook County has gone from the least served list to the best served list thanks in large part to receiving an ARRA grant. When I looked at Cook County in 2014, fiber was being deployed but they only had 20 percent coverage, now they have 94 percent coverage for speeds of 25/3 and 100/20.

Cook County was a Minnesota Intelligent Rural Community (MIRC) participant so while they were building broadband, they were also building demand.

Cook County is in line to receive $1,447,038 in CAF 2 funding to upgrade 3,458 locations. Unfortunately CAF 2 recipients are only required to upgrade to 10/1 access. Many may choose to upgrade to better speeds but there are no requirements.

Numbers:

The Office of Broadband Development released data on broadband covered in fall of 2016, based on information gathered in July 2016. Here’s how Cook County ranked:

• Percentage served with 25/3 or better: 94.50
• Percentage served with 100/20 or better: 94.46

Mississippi State University Extension have come up with a ranking system to gauge the digital divide index (DDI) by county. (The lower the number the better – the state average is 40.66.) Here’s how Cook ranked:

DDI score of 46.79 out of 100.

More info:

• Find more articles on broadband in Cook County. (http://tinyurl.com/hgbzlt7)

• There is a matrix of Minnesota broadband adoption projects; it includes projects from this area.
• Districts: CD 8 / 03

I plan to profile each county in Minnesota – tracking broadband access, digital divide and annotated links to news of what’s happening with broadband in the county. I’m keeping it high level because there are 87 counties!