The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports…

The largely rural Anoka County community of Nowthen is getting wired with something most Twin Cities suburbs already have: high-speed internet.

Nowthen Mayor Jeff Pilon, City Council members and representatives from Comcast held a symbolic groundbreaking Tuesday outside the city offices to kick off the effort. …

Comcast is in the midst of expanding its fast fiber network in all or parts of eight cities in Minnesota: Chanhassen, Corcoran, Cologne, Grant, Hugo, Rogers, Stillwater Township and Nowthen.

Construction in Nowthen will begin in the southwest corner of the city, and move at a rate of about a mile a day. The service will allow customers, if they choose to sign up, access to internet speeds of up to a gigabit per second for residential service and business speeds up to 100 Gbps, the company said.

Minnesota has a statutory goal of ensuring all businesses and homes in the state have access to at least one broadband provider with download speeds of at least 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 20 Mbps by 2026.