Last week I attended a great session in Lindstrom Minnesota (Chicago County) where Ben Winchester was keynote. Here’s the official description of the event … MN rural sociologist Ben Winchester presents his “Rewriting the Rural Narrative” keynote speech at Chisago … Continue reading
Regularly the Blandin Foundation takes a look at the various communities they have been working with to promote, deploy and use better broadband. They use the Mountain of Accountability Framework as a tool to help learn from the past two … Continue reading
Rank: 58 Code: Green (See Blandin Foundation interactive map) Chisago County: resilience with a plan Like several other counties, Chisago County has areas where there is one national provider (or another). Often national providers are not as engaged in rural … Continue reading
From the Minnesota State Republican Caucus… 1,001 homes, farms, and businesses in Chisago County will soon have access to high-speed broadband access. That is thanks to a partnership between the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) and Midco … Continue reading
Thank you to Chisago Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce for sharing their recent survey of broadband access and use in the community. They had 726 respondents, which is pretty darned good. They ask, is your broadband enough – for school … Continue reading
Today we met up with the Chisago Lakes BBC team. Like the other BBC communities, Chisago has been dealing with the COVID challenges of the last year. They have been focus on a few areas: Getting older folks connected with … Continue reading
Here’s the intro… On Monday, November 22, at 2:00pm CT, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Broadband Caucus, will hold a call with community broadband advocates from Benton, Chisago, and Isanti Counties to discuss how the recently … Continue reading
Rank (from 100/20 megabits per second): 29 Code: Yellow Annually, Blandin Foundation pulls together data from the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development and broadband news to gauge progress toward the state broadband goals (25 megabits per second download/3 Mbps upload … Continue reading
I wrote about the big announcement from DEED’s Telecommuter Forward Program last week, but it’s always fun to see local communities get local recognition for their efforts. Isanti-Chisago County Star report… For a long time now, one of the biggest pet … Continue reading
Looking at the map from the Office of Broadband Development (OBD), you can see that Chisago County has very uneven access to broadband. Many areas (including some of the green area) have fiber to the home; while other areas (in … Continue reading
The Blandin Foundation strives to check in with the Blandin Broadband Communities (BBC) members to see what’s happening with broadband on the ground. It’s a fun glimpse of broadband projects. A big part of the conversation is funding and trying … Continue reading
Yahoo! Finance reports… CenturyLink, Inc. CTL announced its plans to bring fiber to more than 1,000 homes and enterprises in Nessel Township, MN. Residents of this rural area will have access to reliable and high-speed Internet. The Monroe, LA-based communications company’s … Continue reading
I shared the live unveiling last week during the broadband conference but each of the winners has worked hard and I didn’t do individual posts about each one so I’ll post these local announcements as I see them. This one … Continue reading
Chisago County seems unlikely to meet the 2022 or 2026 MN speed goals but Chicago County has also been known to form creative partnerships and they have been making a concerted effort for better broadband. They are increasing their access … Continue reading
The Enhancing Our Regional Broadband Capacity had 40+ people in attendance. The presenters included several elected officials, community leaders, business owners and providers. We heard about the importance of surveys and mapping that paints a real picture of the frontlines … Continue reading
Blandin on Broadband 