Winona Post reports…

In recent years, broadband expansion projects have reached thousands of homes in rural Winona County. Still, an estimated 2,100 homes are underserved or unserved in Winona County, Minnesota Office of Broadband Development Executive Director Bree Maki said. The county is reaching the point where the remaining areas are also the most difficult to serve, she said. Maki said she is hopeful that in the four to five years, all of Winona County will be served. “I think especially during the pandemic, we realized that broadband is something that is essential to almost anybody, whether it’s trying to access medical records or medical appointments, as well as our students in education,” she said. Broadband access allows people to live and work in rural communities, she said.

There were five grant awards to different providers in the county over the past 10 years, Maki said, connecting about 2,000 homes and businesses with broadband.

Most recently, in January, MiEnergy secured a $14.1 million federal grant to help bring fiber to areas in Winona and Fillmore counties, including properties east of St. Charles, surrounding Utica, east and south of Lewiston and south of I-90. In 2022, Hiawatha Broadband Communications, Inc. (HBC) and Winona County announced they would collaborate on a $2.6 million project to bring broadband to Sylvan Heights, Saratoga, Big Trout Drive, Spillway Drive and the Arches areas. In 2020, with federal funding, HBC expanded existing networks near Pickwick and Rollingstone, as well as in Dakota County. AcenTek received a DEED grant in 2020 to upgrade broadband from copper to fiber-optic cables in Houston and Winona counties. According to HBC, the organization has also expanded the network in Pickwick and Rollingstone by adding 35 homes to fiber optic services with federal funding and, with some state funding, connected 3,000 homes to fiber optic services in Cedar Valley, East Burns Valley, Elba, Pickwick, the Whitewater State Park area, Wilson and Witoka.

With the county’s bluffs and karst landscape, Maki said it can be challenging to put fiber in the ground for broadband access. HBC Community Relations Manager David Dicke agreed that there are parts of the county where that is hard, because of the topography. “You can’t get fiber there because of the rock,” he said. “It’s astronomically expensive and makes it really not feasible financially.” HBC offers a wireless option, HBC Air, Director of Customer Operations Cory Limberg said. “… Where you’ve had some of these farm properties or out in the bluffs, in these areas where they just couldn’t get internet or any reliable cell service, we’ve had a product that our team can go out here and install in grain silos and other areas … where we can get them good internet access,” he said. Another challenge with expanding broadband access is running and managing a network after building it, Limberg said, so HBC considers these factors when weighing where to build. “And we’re in this for the long haul. HBC is not an organization that has been sold and bought and purchased and changed names many times … whereas some of these other companies that come in to build a network may be doing it to just sell it to another company.”