Tag Archives: Broadband Availability

Beltrami County Broadband 2014 Update: Nearly ubiquitous coverage but not quite there

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beltramiIn November, Connect Minnesota released their final report on broadband availability. Here is how Beltrami County stacked up:

  • Household Density: 5.5
  • Number of Households: 16,846
  • Percentage serviced (without mobile): 98.46%
  • Percentage serviced (with mobile): 98.46%

Beltrami County is close to meeting the 2015 speed goals, which is impressive for a county with a household density of 5.5. The county seat is Bemidji, which is a town of some size. It’s a beautiful area of the state; home to a lot of lakes and resorts. Paul Bunyan and Arvig are two independent providers that serve portions of the county.

Paul Bunyan offers a number of packages that surpass the broadband speeds as defined by the state. (Their top listed services is symmetrical 150 Mbps.) Late in 2013, Paul Bunyan announced plans to upgrade their network…

Paul Bunyan Communications has increased Broadband Internet speeds to members, doubling the current speeds of service offered with no increase to the monthly service rate.  In addition, higher speeds up to 150 Mbps are also now available, the cooperative announced today. Standard Internet speed for Paul Bunyan high-speed customers starts now with up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) for both uploads and downloads with higher speeds available. …

The service area currently spans over 4,500 square miles throughout most of Beltrami County and portions of Cass, Hubbard, Itasca, Koochiching, and St. Louis County.

The folks in (and around) Bemidji have been focused on broadband. Senator Schmit hosted a listening session there in November 2013…

Attendees recognized that broadband coverage is uneven. Areas served by Paul Bunyan Telephone are well served, but just a few miles outside of Crookston you might have no broadband no cell coverage. Park Rapids is OK. Northern part of county out of luck. Red Lake is not well served – it’s hard territory. …

Sally Fineday, member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and broadband advocate also spoke about the needs on the reservations. Broadband access on the reservations is 64 percent; compared to 97-98 percent throughout the rest of the US.

Beltrami seems like a microcosm of access in the state. A lot of good work has been done. Money has been invested. The public has shown support for the effort but more work is needed to reach the folks on the very far edge of the digital divide. Continue reading →

Border to Border Broadband: No Community Left Behind Recap

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The 2014 Minnesota Broadband Conference is done. Whew! It was great to see some faces I hadn’t seen in years – and a few new folks. It’s a bittersweet example of how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. We’re still asking “What is Broadband” but we’re also talking about how to get a gig. The digital divide is still there and it’s getting exacerbated by the increasing chasm. We need to continue to work for broadband expansion – deployment and adoption. But we’re getting closer – and I left the conference inspired.

Bernadine Joselyn offers her parting remarks – I think she always does a good job framing the work for the future…

And I thought I’d try to provide ready reference access here to the various posts from the conference. I may add a few more – and I’ll try to get in and fix typos over the next week but I like to get the information out as soon as I can.

And you can get the notes, video and PowerPoints (when available) from each session: