I am doing the annual look at broadband in each county – based on maps from the Office of Broadband Development and news gathered from the last year.

Cottonwood County went from ranking 73rd to 38! That’s awesome. You can see in the chart below, they are only at 66 percent, but they went from 20 percent and it looks like any improvements in the area are major improvements. They are also at 68 percent coverage for access to 25/3 and that has to hurt for the folks without service, but they are building for the future. And they have been applying for state grants.

It looks like the schools are getting better service…

Through a partnership between SDN Communications and the Southwest West Central (SWWC) Service Cooperative, a fiber-based internet service will come to more than 30 school districts in southwest Minnesota, including every public school district in Nobles, Murray, Rock, Cottonwood and Pipestone counties.

And like they are getting better cell coverage, AT&T made 26 individual network updates to cell towers on its 4G LTE network in 25 southwest Minnesota communities, including Cottonwood County.

The new Wide Area Network, which will offer gigabit upload and download speeds and above, will be up and running by July 1.

Info on Access:

The speeds reflect the Minnesota speed goals:

• 25 Mbps down and 3 up by 2022
• 100 Mbps down and 20 up by 2026

Current ranking for 100/20 access: 38

• Find more articles on broadband in Cottonwood County. (http://tinyurl.com/gnqcknv)
• Districts: CD 1 / 22