The Patriot reports…
Carver County remains on track to become the first Minnesota county of more than 10,000 residents and the first Twin Cities metro county to have 100 percent high-speed broadband service availability.
When that occurs by the end of 2024, ironically some rural areas will have higher internet speed service than at least a couple cities in the county.
Randy Lehs, CarverLink fiber manager, shared that information in an April 16 update to county commissioners on the Connect Up Carver initiative. That effort was established in June 2022 to make fiber connectivity available to every location in the county that wants it, with service of no less than 100 megabytes of upload/download speeds. It involved a $10.5 million fiber buildout to 2,200 county locations with $6.5 million provided by the county. It also involved planned build agreements in the following cities: Waconia, Chaska, Cologne, Carver, Watertown, Norwood Young America, Mayer, Hamburg and New Germany.
About 95 percent of 360 miles of fiber network is now ready for service, Lehs said, with the remainder to be accomplished by Dec. 31, 2024 – except for maybe some areas affected by the current Highway 212 expansion.
And up update on plans…
The expansion, approved last Tuesday by the county board as an amendment to Connect Up Carver construction contracts, involves the build of some 80-plus miles of additional fiber to 440-plus underserved locations in those areas. The $14.3 million rural/urban expansion will utilize an additional $2.5 million of county money authorized from its budget stabilization account created earlier from federal COVID-19 funding.
“There’s lot of fiber in the ground already,” Lehs said, and CarverLink staff will continue to act as a facilitator and partner to develop and manage agreements to extend high-speed broadband.
The expansion is based on extensive negotiations with Metronet leadership and intensive fiber network design, Lehs added. He noted that Carver County has high “take rates” or signups for internet expansion, on order of 80-90 percent versus an industry standard of 30-40 percent, which was an incentive for service provider Jaguar Communications, now Metronet to enter the market here.