$40 million more in stimulus money comes to Minnesota for broadband

UPDATES NOTED BELOW.

Five more MInnesota broadband projects received a total of $40 million in federal stimulus money today to extend high-speed Internet to rural areas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today.

All five awards went to small, rural telephone companies that are trying to build service into areas that to this point are limited mostly to combinations of wireless, satellite and dial-up Internet connections, which can be slow or expensive.

The five, announced today by agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, are:

--$7.4 million to Wikstrom Telephone Co. to run 414 miles of new cable to serve six communities in Kittson, Roseau and Marshall counties. This includes improved service to, of all places, Minnesota's Northwest Angle.

--$15.1 million to Woodstock Telephone Co. to extend fiber in 15 communities in southwestern Minnesota.

--$9.7 million to the Farmers Mutual Telephone Co. to build fiber for rural Lac qui Parle County.

--$5 million to the Arvig Telephone Co. to bring DSL service to 830 households in rural areas near Backus and Pequot Lakes, which are north of Brainerd.

--$3 million to Federated Telephone Cooperative to extend fiber in rural Morris. Federated already has received $1.2 million in grants and loans to build a fiber system serving a rural area around Appleton in western Minnesota.

"This is what the stimulus money is about," said Brent Christensen, who heads the Minnesota Telecom Alliance, whose members include all five of the phone companies awarded money today. "This is getting fiber to the farm," service that Christensen says you can't make a business case for because of the expense involved.

In all, the USDA estimated more than 26,000 people would benefit from the awards, although the number of households actually served by the new fiber is quite a bit smaller.

NOON UPDATE:

Here's one more Minnesota-related project on the USDA list of awards today. A $19.6 million grant to the Winnebago Cooperative Telecom Association in Iowa includes a piece of southern Minnesota in its service area.

In a phone conference call this noon, Vilsack called the stimulus broadband program "a down payment but not a balloon payment" on the national effort to ensure that high-speed Internet access is available to the entire nation. "More work needs to be done;" because of the nation's size, other countries are ahead of the United States on this score, he said.

END UPDATE

You can find the full list of 120 projects across the nation that got money today by going here.

The awards announced today come on top of a series of awards made earlier by the USDA and the Commerce Department. Ultimately, the two are expected to put $7.2 billion in stimulus money into broadband projects around the nation.

Already granted in Minnesota:

--$2.9 million to the University of Minnesota to establish and improve computer centers in four areas of poverty in the Twin Cities.

--$4.9 million to the Blandin Foundation to work in rural Minnesota to increase computer literacy and provide a variety of training, education and technical assistance.

--$1.7 million to the Leech Lake Reservation Business Committee to create computer centers on three Minnesota Indian reservations.

-- $13.4 million to Zayo Bandwidth build a 286-mile fiber network serving Anoka County and parts of Ramsey and Isanti counties.

--$1.2 million to Federated Telephone Cooperative to build a 108-mile fiber network for rural residents around Appleton, Minnesota.

--$12.7 million to the city of Windom to expand its fiber network, adding 125 miles to reach eight nearby communities.

--$43.5 million to the Northeast Service Cooperative to make fiber connections available to providers in northeastern Minnesota.

--$6.5 million to the Halstad Telephone Company to provide 320 miles of fiber to reach five communities in northwestern Minnesota.

--$1.1 million to the Minnesota Valley Television Improvement Corporation to continue building a network to serve 34 communities in west central and south central Minnesota.

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