Lake County is well served at 94 percent access to 25/3 (Mbps down/up) and 100/20 broadband speeds due in large part to an ARRA grant for a project that gave birth to Lake Communications, a homegrown FTTH provider. In November 2016, Lake Communications began working with Consolidated Telecommunications Co. (CTC) to prime them to take over operations and management of the county’s broadband project, Lake Connections.

Lake County is also in line to receive $792 in CAF 2 funding to upgrade 3 locations. 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.

Lake County was a Blandin Broadband Community with projects such as their (High School) Seniors teaching Seniors program that was the start of many fine friendships.

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 Lake County ranked:

• Percentage served with 25/3 or better: 94.32
• Percentage served with 100/20 or better:  94.32

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 they ranked:

DDI score of 50.35 out of 100.

More info:

• Find more articles on broadband in Lake County (http://tinyurl.com/j7pu3le)
•  There is a matrix of Minnesota broadband adoption projects; it includes projects from this area.

• Districts: CD 8
  Senate: 03
  House: 03A

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!