The Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) email newsletter, The Ranger, reports…

Paul Bunyan Communications (PBC) is currently extending one of the fastest rural all-fiber optic networks in the United States, the GigaZone™ to approximately 66 unserved households in an area around Ash Lake in rural northwestern St. Louis County (SLC). The locations will soon have access to fiber optic fast broadband with speeds up to 10 Gbps, along with voice telephone services. Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation supported the project with a $101,000 Broadband Infrastructure grant to PBC. SLC also provided funding. Total project investment is estimated at $270,000.
The project area is about 15 miles north of Orr and 25 miles south of Ray near US Highway 53. Because the entire project area was considered unserved, it likely would have never received basic broadband service without external assistance. The Ash Lake project has approximately four miles of mainline fiber optic cable and is scheduled to be completed in December.
The 66 locations that will receive new service only had access to internet speeds below 10 Mbps, if any. SLC is Minnesota’s largest county at over 6,200 square miles in size and has the highest number of unserved households in the state.
“This project will give the people and homes access to the fastest internet speeds available, both upload and download speeds up to 10 Gig,” said Steve Howard, Paul Bunyan Communications’ IT & Development Manager. “It will be a huge service improvement for everyone in the project area. In addition to the 66 locations passed, Paul Bunyan Communications was able to leverage the fiber installed to provide services to mobile phone towers. The expanded mobile phone coverage will greatly improve communications throughout the area.”
The GigaZone™ not only provides the capacity to handle current communication technologies quickly and efficiently, but it will also meet the increasing demands of the next generation of broadband innovations. For example, initially the network provided a maximum speed of 1 Gigabit per second, but the technology advanced by 2021 so that the cooperative can now offer speeds up to 10 Gigabits per second.
Paul Bunyan Communications started as a telephone cooperative in 1952 and has grown into the largest broadband cooperative in Minnesota serving over 6,000 square miles throughout most of Beltrami County and portions of Cass, Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and St. Louis Counties. In addition to fiber optic fast Internet speeds up to 10 Gig powered by the GigaZone™, the cooperative offers television services, digital voice services, Residential and Business IT services, and is also the home of northern Minnesota’s certified Apple Service Centers in Bemidji and Grand Rapids.
Email Whitney Ridlon or call her at 218-735-3004 for Broadband Infrastructure grant information.