Former Blandin Broadband community, Fond du Lac Reservation, has been working on better broadband for 20 years. Their broadband deployment has been more gradual than some of the other tribal communities.

In March 2022, the Minnesota Broadband Task Force featured Fond du Lac in a monthly meeting. Tribal staff talked about how they approached broadband from all angles – they built demand, wrote grants, realized fiber was the answer and became a fiber broadband provider.

In April, 2023, Fond du Lac Communications, withdrew from their CAF II funding bid.

In October 2024, the Institute for Local Self Reliance featured Fond du Lac and other MN tribals communities building broadband mentioning that the build was supported by grants from the US Department of Agriculture’s Community Connect Program, Minnesota’s Border-to-Border broadband program, and HUD Indian Community Development Block Grants as well as a significant investment from the Tribal government. Network construction began in 2017 with the first subscribers coming online in 2019. The network currently serves about twelve hundred subscribers. (Some aspects surely built from their 2021 report on broadband in tribal areas.)

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