Wilkin County is not poised to meet the speed goals for either 2022 or 2026. Their numbers looked OK a few years ago, but they have not improved; they need to build a momentum.

Green=served Purple=underesrved Red=unserved

Wilkin has benefited from a state broadband grant:

• 2017 – Advantenon – Rural Grant, Stevens and Wilkin Counties – Grant $316,554
  Serving 528 unserved households, 132 unserved businesses, and 8 unserved community anchor institutions in Rural Grant, Stevens and Wilkin Counties with service levels to 100 Mbps download and 100 Mbps upload.

Wilkin County needs to jumpstart a focus on broadband; it seems like that might happen. Sen. Torrey Westrom and Rep. Jeff Backer  held a town hall meeting in February 2019 to talk about broadband. In summer of 2019, the Wilkin County Commissioner Dennis Larson advocated for legislative funding for broadband.

Now they need to extend that enthusiasm into action working with providers to extend better broadband throughout the county.

Checklist:

• 100/20 ranking: 34 (down from 20)
• 25/3 ranking: 38
• Has worked with Blandin: no
• Has received a MN Broadband grant: yes
• Household density: 3.6
• Number of providers: 8

Details:

• Find more articles on broadband in Wilkin County (http://tinyurl.com/zh64v29)
• Districts: CD 7
  Senate: 12
  House: 12A
• 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)