Category Archives: FTTH

Minnesota broadband provider tells USTelecom conference Minnesotans expect fiber

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Broadband Breakfast reports…

A Minnesota broadband leader warned Thursday that imposing a per-location price cap under the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program would be “terribly detrimental” to the state’s progress toward universal fiber access.

“All of the locations that are left are really high-cost areas,” said Kristi Westbrock, CEO and general manager of Consolidated Telecommunications Company, speaking at the USTelecom 2025 American Connectivity Forum. “So, the number one leading concern definitely is the discussion around caps [being] put in place on how much could be spent per location.”

“Minnesotans expect fiber,” said Westbrook, whose company is a cooperative broadband provider serving central and northern Minnesota. “We’ve had our broadband program in place for so long, and the stories of fiber are well known. Consumers understand what fiber to their home means for them.”

Recent study on consumer takes on various broadband technologies

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Telecompetitor reports…

A study conducted on behalf of Amdocs finds that consumers value reliability, affordability, and uninterrupted access — and suggests that providers may benefit by offering all three via mixed-technology networks. …

Cable has the highest level of internet access (39%). It is followed by fiber (31%) and FWA (9%). The study found that 3% of consumers do not have a dedicated internet connection at home.

Fully 60% of respondents say their home internet is very reliable, but at the same time cite cost as the biggest issue. Commentary in the press release says that this illustrates the need to balance performance with affordability.

Overall, the priorities are closely divided. An equal percent (38%) of consumers prioritize speed and reliability when choosing a provider. The study commentary suggests that CSPs can put together offerings in their networks that eliminate trade-offs.

FWA and satellite broadband are the new kids on the block. Amdocs says that FWA is emerging as a strong competitor but that more than half of consumers — 47% — have never heard of it.

The broadband satellite sector is even newer. The survey found that 67% of consumers would consider switching if it provides a comparable experience. Concerns about cost, reliability, and speed persist. The study found that 37% of consumers are unfamiliar with satellite Internet. This, Amdocs Research says, points to an education gap about the technology.

Arvig recommends redundant fiber connections in Mpls St Paul Magazine

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Minneapolis St Paul Magazine posts an article from local broadband provider Arvig…

Despite the importance of these connections, unforeseen events – a network outage or inclement weather – can cause significant disruptions. But businesses don’t have to accept a wait-and-see approach. There’s a proactive option instead: a redundant internet connection.

Redundant connections provide a backup internet connection on a separate network backbone that activates when the primary internet source fails. Internet redundancy ensures that businesses maintain online access even if their primary connection fails, minimizing downtime and disruptions.

Before businesses explore solutions for a redundant connection, there are a few important things to consider: overall bandwidth needs, latency requirements (lower latency means faster data transmission), budget and the number of critical applications your network depends on (don’t forget cloud-based software and VoIP-based phone service).

They go one to list four reasons to choose fiber…

  1. Unmatched reliability and stability
  2. High bandwidth capacity and scalability
  3. Low latency for critical applications
  4.  Enhanced security

Minnesota and Maine ask US Dep of Commerce about change to BEAD

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Telecompetitor reports…

At least two states — Maine and Minnesota — have contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce concerning the changes that may be made to the $42.45 billion the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.

Here’s the Minnesota action…

Minnesota’s suggestions about BEAD came via a letter to Lutnick from Bree Maki, the Executive Director of the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development. The requested “volume 2” changes are a reduction or elimination of program and reporting requirements she characterized as “excessive.” The letter also requested four administrative task changes.

“Any changes enacted by NTIA should be optional and states should have the flexibility to make the changes they need to be successful in their state,” Maki wrote. “We are confident that the modifications and priorities we are requesting will not only improve Minnesota’s ability to strategically and effectively implement the BEAD Program but also serve as a model for other states seeking similar enhancements.”

37 providers on the Minnesota BEAD Approved Applicant list

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The list of providers who had applied for BEAD rep-qualification and bee approved is now out. It is interesting to see who is on the list and who is not. The list came out late yesterday. The Office of Broadband Development is hosting their Office Hours today at 11am, where I’m sure they will be willing to take questions. (The hold Office Hours weekly.)

  1. Ace Telephone Association
  2. AMG Technology Investment Group, LLC d/b/a Nextlink Internet
  3. Christensen Communications Company
  4. Consolidated Communications
  5. CTC
  6. EarthLink
  7. East Central Energy Fiber
  8. Emily Cooperative Telephone Company
  9. Federated Rural Electric Association
  10. Frontier
  11. Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Company
  12. Hanson Communication
  13. Harmony Telephone Company
  14. IBT Group USA, LLC
  15. Johnson Telephone Company
  16. KMTelecom
  17. MCC Broadband Data
  18. Meeker Cooperative Light & Power Association
  19. Midco
  20. MiEnergy
  21. Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative
  22. Nuvera
  23. Otter Tail Telcom
  24. PAUL BUNYAN COMMUNICATIONS
  25. PCs for People
  26. Red River Communications
  27. Runestone Telephone Association
  28. SCI Broadband
  29. Sjobergs
  30. Spectrum Mid-America, LLC
  31. Sytek
  32. Tekstar Communications, Inc.
  33. Wikstrom Telephone Company Inc
  34. Windstream Lakedale, Inc.
  35. Winnebago Cooperative Telecom Association
  36. Woodstock Communications
  37. Xfinity

Here’s more on pre-qualification from the Office of Broadband Development’s BEAD Pre-Qualification Guidance Document…

Before undertaking a subgrantee selection process and awarding BEAD funds, the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development must pre-qualify all prospective applicants to ensure they meet the minimum requirements for subgrantee eligibility. This document is meant to provide prospective applicants with a clear understanding of Minnesota’s BEAD Pre- Qualification process and what documentation they need to prepare.

This guide outlines procedures, requirements, and necessary steps, as outlined in Minnesota’s NTIA-approved Initial Proposal Volume 2. This guide may change with new guidance from NTIA or as the OBD receives questions from prospective applicants. Any changes made to this guide will be clearly documented in version history and communicated to prospective applicants. Further, the OBD will post all pre-qualification documentation and resources on the Minnesota Broadband website.

Please note that, as described in Minnesota’s Initial Proposal Volume 2, participating in the pre-qualification process does not bind any internet service provider to submit a project area proposal. However, all prospective applicants who are considering participation or intend to submit a proposal must participate in pre-qualification. There will only be one pre-qualification round, so prospective applicants must participate, even if they only intend to apply for BEAD funds in later rounds of subgrantee selection.

Information submitted during the pre-qualification process for an organization will make up part of the score on all proposed projects during each round of subgrantee selection. For more information about project scoring, please refer to Minnesota’s Initial Proposal Volume 2.

Trump Administration eliminates preference for fiber in BEAD grants, opens the door to satellite

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Ars Technica reports…

The Trump administration is eliminating a preference for fiber Internet in a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, a change that is expected to reduce spending on the most advanced wired networks while directing more money to Elon Musk’s Starlink and other non-fiber Internet service providers. One report suggests Starlink could obtain $10 billion to $20 billion under the new rules.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that “because of the prior Administration’s woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment.”

The BEAD program was authorized by Congress in November 2021, and the US was finalizing plans to distribute funding before Trump’s inauguration. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Commerce Department, developed rules for the program in the Biden era and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory.

Willmar City Council asks staff to work with Charter Communication on plan for fiber to the Industrial Park and some service to residents

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The West Central Tribune reports …

The Willmar City Council on Tuesday unanimously directed city staff to work with Charter Communications on a commitment — by March 3 — to offer fiber-optic services in the Willmar Industrial Park and establish a timeline for increased residential services in the rest of the city.

A nearly hour-long discussion took place during the meeting regarding what Charter is offering versus the Connect Willmar Initiative, an open-access, fiber-optic network the city has been researching and planning for two years.

“One of the underlying goals of the Connect Willmar Initiative was to bring a desired level of internet service to all the residents and businesses,” said City Operations Director Kyle Box.

I have mentioned the situation in Willmar before. Connect Willmar, as mentioned above, has been working with Hometown Fiber on a community broadband plan. Charter Communications recently sent a letter to the City Council countering…

The meeting came in response to a letter the city received from Charter on Feb. 7, promising that if the city discontinues the Connect Willmar Initiative, Charter would install fiber-optic lines in the Willmar Industrial Park at no cost to the city.

Kyle Box from the City of Willmar spoke…

Box explained that a high-split network, which is what Charter is proposing for residential neighborhoods, utilizes the same coaxial infrastructure that Charter currently has in place in Willmar, but engineering would take place and electronic amplifiers would be installed in order to put data out at a higher frequency range to expand the bandwidth available for faster download and upload speeds.

He added that there are limitations on the distance at which that high-split models can increase speeds and bandwidth, especially with multiple users.

He noted that for long-term performance and future scalability, fiber networks have a 30- to 40-year lifespan and are the preferred option, with limited interference or degradation to the amount of bandwidth or data being transferred over the line.

OBD Weekly Office Hours, February 18: pre-qualification questions

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A quick but helpful OBD Office hour this week. The questions are getting more specific as folks are clearly filling out the BEAD pre-qualification forms. BEAD eligible locations can be found on the MN Maps BEAD dashboard. (There’s also a training video.) The map shows eligible locations.

Q: How far back to we have to report public funding?
Five years. You don’t need to report CAF or ACAM funding unless you are planning to deploy to locations using that funding soon.

Q: Do you need to report newly served locations?
Yes even if served with private funding. NTIA will update their maps regularly but there may be a gap between a location getting service and the map getting updated. So there is a chance that BEAD funding will be distributed to homes that are (recently) served.

Q: Do we need to report local government funding?
No that should be tracked already.

Q: Can we submit waivers to NTIA?
No, they must go through OBD.

Happy anniversary ECE Fiber customers: from 12 to 4000 in a year

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Kanabec County Times reports…

On Friday, Jan. 17, East Central Energy proudly celebrated a major milestone: the one-year anniversary of connecting members to ECE Fiber.

The event brought together a mix of attendees, including ECE directors, vendors, contractors, local government representatives, state officials, and many more who have supported the endeavor.

During the event, President/CEO Justin Jahnz said a few words regarding the achievement.

A lot has happened in a year…

Over the past year, ECE has seen significant growth in all areas of the project, with the most visible progress being member connections. In January 2024, the cooperative had 12 members connected to ECE Fiber. Since then, around 4,000 additional connections have been made, with more being added every day. The co-op is committed to providing reliable internet and a positive broadband experience while keeping service affordable for members.

Carver County is getting closer and closer to ubiquitous Gig coverage

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The Institute of Local Self Reliance profiles Carver County…

Officials in Carver County Minnesota continue to make great progress expanding affordable fiber access to the county of 111,000 residents, thanks largely to their publicly-owned open access fiber network CarverLink and their partnership with Metronet.

Since its inception in 2013, Carver County has leveraged public and private collaborations and funding with the goal of making symmetrical gigabit (1 Gbps) fiber available to all locations county wide. With the looming completion of its most recent $10.5 million expansion, CarverLink Fiber Manager Randy Lehs told ISLR they’re getting very close to their ultimate goal.

The county currently has ownership and use of nearly 1,200 miles of fiber throughout Carver County and southern Minnesota connecting more than 280 last mile public and community support locations. Many of these markets have no connectivity; many others are stuck on dated, sluggish, patchy connectivity from regional monopolies.

And an update…

CarverLink began construction in fall 2024 in Victoria and Chanhassen and is looking for substantial construction throughout 2025 with a completion deadline of June 2026.

“As of February 2025, CarverLink is 90 percent complete with this aspect of the CUCE project and is on task to complete by our deadline of June 2025,” Lehs said.

That leaves Chaska, Minnesota, population 29,000, as the last Carver County city without identified public or private projects – or existing service provider plans to connect to all the city’s remaining un/underserved locations to affordable fiber. Lehs says CarverLink has been having discussions with both Metronet about potential expansion there.

But they’re also pressuring Comcast to upgrade the 10,000 locations in Chaska that Xfinity provides non symmetrical fiber service of 1Gbps so the city can complete its goal of county wide gigabit fiber access.

What are potential broadband impacts of tariffs?

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Fierce Communications reports…

President Donald Trump is less than a month into his second term but has wasted no time imposing a 10% tariff on goods from China, sparking concern from the telecom industry. Equipment vendors are understandably keeping a close eye on how events unfold, because while wireline providers may be left unscathed the same can’t be said for the supply chain.

Will Townsend, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told Fierce the China tariff is a “non-impact” for rural U.S. broadband deployments, given providers have been “well on the way” of reducing equipment from vendors like Huawei and ZTE. IDC analyst Jitesh Bhayani similarly said he doesn’t anticipate “an immediate impact from a service providers perspective.”

That’s mainly due to the government’s Rip and Replace program, which is poised to get $3 billion in additional funding from Congress. And in the past few years, fiber vendors have also been onshoring their manufacturing to the U.S. due to Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act requirements associated with the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.

Ars Technica reports on CenturyLink outages

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Ars Technica reports…

Unfortunately, it keeps happening, and CenturyLink (also known as Lumen) can’t seem to explain why. In only the last two months, we heard from CenturyLink customers in three states who were without service for periods of between three weeks and over four months.

In early December, we heard from John in Boulder, Colorado, who preferred that we not publish his last name. John said he and his wife had been without CenturyLink phone and DSL Internet service for over three weeks. …

John also told us his elderly neighbors were without service. He read our February 2024 article about a 39-day outage in Oregon and wondered if we could help. We also published an August 2023 article about CenturyLink leaving an 86-year-old woman in Minnesota with no Internet service for a month and a May 2024 article about CenturyLink leaving a couple in Oregon with no service for two months, then billing them for $239.

The article outlines the trials and tribulations of getting these problems fixed. In the examples given, it helps when Ars Technica contacted the provider.  Any company can have an off day, the question is – how or why is it happening? It sounds like one issue is trying to maintain an old technology and grow another technology at the same time…

John praised CenturyLink’s local repair team but said his requests for repairs apparently weren’t routed to the right people. A CenturyLink manager told John that the local crew never got the repair ticket from the phone-based customer service team, he said.

The technician who fixed the service offered some insight into the local problems, John told us. “He said that in the mountains of western Boulder County, there are a total of five techs who know how to work with copper wire,” John told us. “All the other employees only work with fiber. CenturyLink is losing the people familiar with copper and not replacing them, even though copper is what the west half of the county depends on.”

Lumen says it has 1.08 million fiber broadband subscribers and 1.47 million “other broadband subscribers,” defined as “customers that primarily subscribe to lower speed copper-based broadband services marketed under the CenturyLink brand.”

EVENT Feb 10: Willmar City Council meets about Connect Willmar initiative

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The West Central Tribune reports…

The Willmar City Council will be having a work session on Monday, Feb. 10, to hear updates and information on the Connect Willmar initiative.

The public is invited to attend the work session, which will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Willmar Fire Hall, 515 Second Street Southwest.

The city for two years has been working on the Connect Willmar initiative, which will be a municipally-owned, citywide open-access fiber optic network.

The open-access fiber optic network will allow multiple internet service providers to use the network to provide internet services to the residents and businesses of Willmar. Internet service providers will pay a fee to the city to use the network.

The city plans to use general obligation bonds to pay for the construction of the network, and the fees it collects will be used to pay back the bonds.

Construction of phase one of the project is expected to take place in 2025.

Why BEAD Should Continue to Prioritize Fiber?

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The Institute for Local Self Reliance has published a policy brief on why  BEAD Should Continue to Prioritize Fiber Internet Network Investments…

In designing BEAD, Congress recognized that it was foolish to spend thousands of dollars per home every 5-10 years to deliver obsolete connections and chose instead to build fiber optic networks that will last generations – ultimately both saving taxpayer dollars and delivering an equitable Internet access option to millions of rural homes. To be clear, BEAD’s priority for fiber does not bar the use of other technologies when appropriate. In cases where the cost of fiber is simply too great, other technologies are on the table – likely wireless options of both terrestrial and low-earth orbit.

Fiber does not mean bigger bills to residents…

On the matter of residential pricing, fiber optic networks in rural areas operated by rural cooperatives offer services at prices comparable to or less than that of urban areas. For instance, Paul Bunyan in Minnesota has options starting at $60/mo for 250 Mbps symmetrical and a gigabit for $80. Co-Mo Connect, one of the first electric co-ops to build its entire electric footprint with fiber, starts at $55/mo for 100 Mbps and a gig at $85/mo. Starlink residential prices start at $120/mo for far lower speeds.

Some wireless options are everywhere, but not all of the time…

A final consideration is that some wireless technologies – primarily low-earth orbit and mobile wireless – are not able to serve all homes simultaneously and may not be able to serve all homes in rural America looking for service. Some of these technologies could serve almost anyone, but cannot serve everyone – meaning that some homes will be put on waiting lists when the system reaches max capacity.

HBC Continues Flight Fiber Expansion in Winona, MN

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Big news from HBC…

Hiawatha Broadband Communications, Inc. (HBC) announced today the roll-out of an additional 3,100 new passings for their symmetrical multi-gig network, Flight Fiber. This brings the total number of homes and businesses with access to Flight Fiber to more than 5,000 in the Winona area.
This network growth is part of HBC’s $4 million initiative to replace its existing hybrid fiber coax (HFC) infrastructure with the next-generation Flight Fiber network. Once completed, this project will ensure reliable, high-speed fiber-optic access for all of Winona’s residents.
“Our ongoing investment in Winona reflects HBC’s commitment to delivering the best network experience to homes and businesses across the city,” said Dan Pecarina, HBC president and general manager. “We’re thrilled to extend our Flight Fiber network to benefit all residents in Winona.”
Flight Fiber offers cutting-edge technology that delivers ultra-fast, symmetrical speeds ranging from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit. To meet the growing needs of our customers, faster speeds will be available in the future.
Winona Community Development Director Lucy McMartin expressed appreciation for HBC’s efforts.“HBC’s investments in Winona are invaluable. Expanding broadband access is crucial for fostering new businesses and driving economic growth in our community.”
HBC will continue expanding its multi-gig Flight Fiber network in 2025, with plans to add an additional 2,700 passings in Winona. Winona residents and businesses interested in upgrading to HBC’s Flight Fiber can visit hbci.com for more information.