Celebrating 10 years of Carver County’s CarverLink Fiber Network

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Time flies when you’ve got fiber! I remember the start of CarverLink and I’m thankful that they’d share their highlights. Like all overnight success stories, it takes more than a day. Carver County got ARRA funding, which helped greatly. Any community interested in BEAD funding might take a look at how Carver made it happen…

It is hard to believe but September 2023 is the 10 year “Go Live” anniversary of Carver County’s CarverLink Public Fiber Network.  Oh, how we have grown over the past decade.

The primary purpose for CarverLink is to provide quality and reliable fiber connectivity to support the County’s operations, from sheriff and public works activities to our libraries, parks and license centers.  The secondary purpose for CarverLink is threefold 1) Provide fiber connectivity to our 20+ public and community support partners; 2) Provide a fiber network that is available to private service providers (such as Metronet, Arvig and others) to make available high speed broadband to our businesses and residents; 3) Utilize CarverLink’s fiber resources to make available appropriate connectivity options to other regional public entities via fiber barters, sharing and collaborations that benefit the County and/or region.

All this growth is possible because of the strong “family” relationship we have built with our public and community support partners coupled with the County Board’s understanding of the value and long term commitment to devote resources to broadband.  This commitment and understanding is helping us towards reaching our goal of becoming the first county in the State to make available high speed broadband to all locations within the County that desire it.

And we absolutely need to call out the positive and mutually beneficial public-private relationship we have had and continue to have with our primary fiber partner Metronet (previously Jaguar Communications).  The noncompetitive, non-adversarial, shared vision and true desire for mutual success from both parties is what has made this public private collaboration a success and a relationship to be mirrored for other public private partnerships.

A little history on Carver County’s fiber efforts over the past 15 years

  • Between 2007-2010 Carver County identifies the need for fiber connectivity and dedicates resources to work on multiple design and associated funding options to construct a fiber network, which includes multiple submissions for broadband grant funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
  • Aug 2010 the County is notified it is an awardee of a $6 million grant for a $7.5 million fiber project from ARRA funding for a public private partnership project with Jaguar Communications to construct a 122 mile fiber network
  • Feb 2011 the County lights up its first ever fiber segment, which runs from the Carver County Govt Center in Chaska to the Scott County Govt Center in Shakopee underneath the MN River on Hwy 41
  • August 2011 the County begins construction on the partially ARRA funded CarverLink fiber network constructing a segment between Chaska and City of Carver
  • April 2013 based on an urgent request from Eastern Carver County Schools District 112 due to a major need for bandwidth currently unavailable from any existing private service providers, CarverLink connects to and begins providing internet service to the Chanhassen High School making them our first connected public entity partner
  • Sept 2013 Carver County’s newly renamed CarverLink fiber network officially goes live
  • July 2015 based on unprecedented public entity use, CarverLink hits its peak maximum bandwidth limit 3 years early
  • Sept 2016 CarverLink upgrades to a fully operational 10GB network, alleviating its bandwidth bottleneck
  • Dec 2016, Jaguar Communications, the County’s primary fiber partner, completes its first city fiber overlay in Carver County in the City of NYA, which means it made fiber connectivity available to all addresses located within city limits
  • Oct 2018 CarverLink executes its first fiber collaboration with another non Carver County entity, Hennepin County
  • July 2020 Metronet acquires Jaguar Communications, CarverLink’s primary fiber network partner
  • Sept 2022 CarverLink completes ¾ million dollar project that completely replaces all CarverLink’s legacy network electronics and upgrades the network from a 10GB to a 25GB mesh fabric network.
  • June 2022 the County Board approves the largest expansion in history to the CarverLink network allocating $6.5 million for a $10.5 million project called Connect Up Carver that will build over 350 miles of fiber to over 2200 rural locations, with the fiber construction bid won by Metronet
  • March 2023 Metronet activates service to the first two customers from the CarverLink Connect Up Carver project which are in rural Hamburg, MN
  • Sept 2023 CarverLink completes construction of roughly 200 miles of the 350 miles of Connect Up Carver fiber build
  • Sept 2023 the County Board unanimously approves moving forward with the preliminary 2024 recommended budget which includes $2.5 million that would be utilized to expand the current Connect Up Carver project with a Connect Up Carver 2.0 project. This project and funding would essentially provide the County what it needs to become the first County in the State of MN to make available high speed bandwidth to all locations within the County that want it.

If you are interested in finding out more about the County’s broadband activities, which includes our ongoing $10.5 million, 350 mile Connect Up Carver fiber expansion, and many other programs and initiatives, visit the County’s newly updated CarverLink website at https://carverlink.com/broadband-efforts/.

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