The Ely Echo reports…

Residents along the North Arm Rd, Echo Trail, Grant McMahan Boulevard and Winton Road areas may be getting a new internet service option.

Treehouse Broadband is looking to the future and applying for a grant of $1.8 million to bring multi-gigabit internet to homes on the outskirts of Ely.

“The grant would help immensely to make this project a reality because it takes a big principal investment to get this going,” said Isaac Olson, owner of Treehouse Broadband.

MN DEED has 50 million dollars available of matching grant money in their current broadband grant round, and the Ely area has not seen DEED broadband grant money through the first eight rounds over previous years.

The area east of Ely Treehouse wants to cover with help from the grant still relies on phone lines that haven’t been upgraded in 30 years since they were installed.

Underground fiber installation can often be preferable to overhead for reliability reasons.

“We’ve seen multi-week outages on overhead phone lines due to storm damage, which wouldn’t be an issue if the lines were underground,” Olson said.

If their $1.8 million project application is successful, Treehouse plans to install multi-gigabit fiber internet service to 200+ homes and businesses over the next two years.