Martin County is not poised to meet the state speed goals for either 2022 or 2026. What’s unfortunate is that they have seen an increased in access to 25/3, but not 100/20. That means they have “upgrading” to a speed that will not meet the 2026 goals. But two local providers have announced plans to make additional upgrades, and that may help.

Martin County has benefited with three state grants:

• 2017- BEVCOMM (Granada Telephone Company) — Granada Rural Final – GRANT: $202,410
  Serving 35 unserved households and 21 unserved businesses in the rural Granada area located in Martin County with service levels to 1 Gbps.
• 2016 – GRANADA TELEPHONE COMPANY (DBA BEVCOMM) SOUTH RURAL GRANADA – GRANT:  $157,920
  Serving 26 unserved households and 14 unserved businesses in the rural Granada area in Martin County with service levels to 1 Gigabit.
• 2016 – MARTIN COUNTY (WITH FRONTIER) RURAL BROADBAND INITIATIVE – GRANT: $1,677,823
  Serving 1784 unserved households, 51 unserved businesses, and 9 unserved community institutions across Martin County with service levels to a minimum of 25 Mbps download by 3 Mbps.

Martin County was a 2015-2016 Blandin Broadband Community  and through that partnership they had a feasibility study done in 2017. It seems that Martin County is in a position that other rural counties may find themselves…

Martin County is in a challenging position. The two largest cities – Fairmont and Sherburn, along with the community Granada and its surrounding rural area, are relatively well connected. However, the remaining rural areas and communities throughout the county in some cases have no access to any broadband options at all. The digital divide challenges any provider to build a business case for expanding service offerings in the rural areas.

In early 2019, Martin County learned that both Frontier (using grant mentioned above) and Bevcomm had plans for broadband improvements…

Bevcomm recently purchased part of Hanson Communications territory in Southern Minnesota and plans to begin installing broadband fiber to help serve Truman, Trimont and Welcome.

Checklist:

• 100/20 ranking: 64 (down from 48)
• 25/3 ranking: 57
• Has worked with Blandin: yes
• Has received a MN Broadband grant: yes
• Household density: 12.4
• Number of providers: 4

Details:

• Martin County has worked with the Blandin Foundation
• Find more articles on broadband in Martin County (http://tinyurl.com/h37zf6l)
• There is a matrix of Minnesota broadband adoption projects.
• Districts: CD 1
  Senate: 23
  House: 23A
• Find your reps

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. I’m looking at progress toward the 2022 (25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up) and 2026 (100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up) and will code each:

• Red (yikes)
• Yellow (warning)
• Green (good shape)