Rank: 52
Code: Red
(See Blandin Foundation interactive map)

Brown County: maybe some deployment will spur more

Brown County is up from 54 to 52 rank after a drop last year from 45 to 54 for broadband access out of 87 counties. They will benefit from a recent MN Broadband Grant award but they have no line extension awards and haven’t invested any local government funding into broadband.

Brown gets a red ranking because their growth continues to be very slow.

• Over the years, Brown County (or cities within) has not invested for matches for any successful MN Broadband grants.
• Brown County will benefit from a 2024 $395,138 MN Broadband grant award that will serve 245 locations between Brown and Cottonwood Counties.
• Brown County will not benefit from line extension awards.
• Last years’ estimates indicated that it would cost $21 million to get ubiquitous broadband in the county. (I haven’t updated the number because recent report offers scenarios of costs based on BEAD funding rules that make current estimates less predictable than in the past. Yet, I think the number is still helpful.)
• In 2022, Brown ranked 34 using Microsoft’s Digital Equity Tool, which looks at various factors of a community.

2024 Grants:

County: Brown, Cottonwood
Hanson Communications
Hanson – Comfrey FTTP
Grant: $395,138
Local Match: $592,711
Total Budget: $987,849
Hanson Communications will build and operate a Fiber to the Premises network to cover the unserved and underserved areas in Comfrey, MN. Hanson has identified this project as an area in need of better broadband as nearly 85% of the town is unserved according to the Minnesota definition of broadband service. There are 245 total fiber passings in the project including 161 unserved households, 47 unserved businesses, and 5 unserved community anchor institutions, including the school, the fire station, the City office, the post office and the community center. There are an additional 27 underserved households, and 5 businesses. Many of the people who work and live in Comfrey are connected to agriculture in some way, shape or form. Farmers, specifically, can achieve heightened efficiency and tap into new markets and resources by integrating broadband into their farming and livestock operations. The city of Comfrey has contributed $10,000 toward the project.

Past Grants:

• 2107 – New Ulm Telecom, Inc.– Hanska A&D FTTP – GRANT $324,894
• 2016 – New Ulm Telecom, Inc. – Hanska – GRANT: $ 200,397
• 2019: Nuvera Communications, Inc. – New Ulm SW Project – GRANT $385,600
• Minnesota Valley Telephone Company (MVTC) – Rural Franklin Fiber Project – GRANT $226,800. This middle and last mile project will serve approximately 45 unserved locations in the City of Franklin and the townships of Sherman, Eden, Camp and Birch Cooley in Redwood, Renville and Brown counties.

Find more articles on broadband in Brown County. (http://tinyurl.com/z2wwkye)

The maps below on the left comes from the Office of Broadband Development interactive map, reflecting data updated on December 16, 2024. Red dots represent locations unserved locations. Above I have tracked wireline access because that is the Minnesota definition of broadband. The info below includes wired and wireless. BEAD includes fixed wireless connections as served locations. (I wrote more on the distinction between the two last year, which may be if interest in the numbers range greatly for your county.)

I am doing the annual look at broadband in each county – based on maps from the Office of Broadband Development and news gathered from the last year. I’m looking at progress toward the 2022 (25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up) and 2026 (100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up) and will code each:

• Red (yikes)
• Yellow (warning)
• Green (good shape)