Twin Cities Pioneer Press, June 20, 2014
John Socha once yearned to work from his Spring Grove home, but was crippled by out-of-date technology – notably his excruciatingly pokey rural Minnesota dial-up Internet access.
So Socha, a creator of digital-audio content for radio, had to journey nine miles to a Caledonia office for an Internet connection fast enough to let him upload his sound files.
Today, those pesky commutes are a distant memory. Socha is now on the Internet fast lane via a fiber-optic connection from local telecom cooperative Spring Grove Communications, with upload and download speeds roughly comparable to those offered by Comcast in the Twin Cities.
Socha said he’s living the dream: Country living (he’s several miles outside of Spring Grove, population 1,310, and roughly 150 miles southeast of the Twin Cities) with big-city tech.
Though slow in coming, access to high-speed Internet around the state is on the rise. This includes wired access with physical connections via copper, coaxial or fiber-optic technologies, and wireless from cellular operators AT&T and Verizon, providing Internet service to phones, tablets and notebook computers.
Wireless, though, usually complements and does not replace physical access for most consumers because of caps on data usage.
Verizon Wireless, Minnesota’s wireless-Internet leader, has blanketed most of the state with high-speed service. Rival AT&T is hot on Verizon’s heels, offering rapidly expanding wireless-data service of its own.
This means most outstate Minnesotans, if they have AT&T or Verizon, have Internet-access speeds that would have seemed like science fiction a decade ago – provided they’re willing to access their carrier’s data plan.
‘HORSE AND BUGGY’
But for wired Internet, much of the state still is in the dark ages.
Socha said a friend of his, living not far outside of Caledonia, still has no option other than dial-up service for wired home Internet access.
In 2013, about a quarter of Minnesotans lacked access to high-speed or “broadband,” according to a state report released earlier this year.
The report’s authors, called Governor’s Task Force on Broadband, define “broadband” as download speeds of 10 to 20 megabits per second and uploads of 5 to 10 megabits per second, roughly what a Twin Cities home Comcast user had. Generally, this is understood to be wired and not wireless access.
More recent data in April from the St. Paul-based nonprofit Connect Minnesota, a group focused on expanding high-speed Internet, pegged broadband use in Minnesota at 79 percent, up from 72 percent in 2010.
“A significant number of Greater Minnesota households are still relegated to the horse-and-buggy days of dial up and many more only have access to a slow DSL connection,” said the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance, another broadband proponent.
While most Twin Cities residents have access to what the institute calls a broadband “minimum standard” with download speeds of at least 10 megabits per second, “fewer than half of Greater Minnesota households have such access,” it said in a recent report.
Minnesota had set of a goal of universal broadband access by 2015, but will fall short.
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A lack of high-quality broadband access largely is due to a lack of “robust competition for services,” according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
“Like most of America, Minnesotans generally have to choose between a single cable company and a single telephone company for a broadband connection,” the group said in its recent report.
Comcast, which typically provides the fastest speeds, operates primarily in the Twin Cities, the institute noted, while most of the rest of the state is served by Charter and Mediacom.
These companies “have been much slower to upgrade their cable systems,” it said.
The state’s broadband proponents do take pains to highlight success stories.
Locally spawned Internet providers like Spring Grove Communications, serving as alternatives to national providers like Comcast, are an emerging and promising trend in Minnesota, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
“Rural cooperatives, mostly telephone but also some electric, have invested significantly in fiber optic connections capable of very high speeds,” the group said in its recent report.
The report focuses on local governments and other civic entities around the state with aggressive broadband-deployment policies.
These include: Scott and Sibley counties; the cities of Windom, Monticello, Chaska and Buffalo; and Lac qui Parle County with its county seat and “Lutefisk Capital USA” Madison. The various localities have adopted a range of approaches, according to the report.
In Lac qui Parle County and Sibley counties, government agencies created partnerships with, respectively, a local telephone cooperative and a broadband cooperative.
“Windom and Monticello built their own city-wide FTTH (fiber to the home) networks in the face of forceful opposition,” the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s report said. “Chaska and Buffalo have invested in fiber and wireless technologies to connect anchor institutions, businesses and residents.”
The common thread: “When large incumbents declined to provide affordable, fast and reliable connectivity, each of these communities took control of their own situation,” the report said.
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