Minnesota counties look to speed up internet service

State leaders often talk about two Minnesotas, a well-connected Minnesota around the Twin Cities and a less advanced Minnesota elsewhere.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Internet service, something more and more Minnesotans see as essential as electricity and telephones.

“It is one of those clear-cut issues that really separates regions and really makes ‘haves’ and ‘have nots,’” said Brad Finstad, executive director of Min­nesota’s Center for Rural Policy and Develop­ment.

Across the state and particularly in Lake County, there is a movement to correct that disparity and to speed connections outside the metro area up to levels that allow all Minnesotans to use online health, government and business services.

Enter the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Task Force, which recently made the recommendation that broadband Internet service is necessary for everyone, and that everyone should have access to ultra-high speed broadband by 2015.

Just how to achieve that isn’t clear. Task force members skirted the question of funding, other than to encourage governments and private businesses to work together.

Lake County hopes to blaze a trail to a faster Internet with private businesses paying most of the cost. County officials want to lay fiber optic cable, capable of carrying high-speed signals, to every home and business with electricity. If it happens, the county could become a model not only for Minnesota but the country, offering its rural citizens the same service their big-city cousins receive.

“It is kind of like stepping off the side of the cliff,” County Board chairman Paul Bergman said of the County Board’s decision to act as middleman between the feds and private firms to obtain a low-interest federal loan for the hook-up.

That cliff, like Palisade Head, could turn into a destination.

“The studies that have shown ... with the fiber [optic cable], property values increase, the population increases and there is more economic growth,” Berg­man said. “It also helps with economic retention.”

About a year and a half ago, state economic development officials were helping a company look for up to 500 acres of land within 30 minutes of a major airport and close to a railroad. Lake County could provide both.

But the county lost out, Bergman said, because it did not have one other requirement: A high-speed internet fiber connection.

County officials do not know which company was looking, but they decided it was a data storage business and “they figured it was so much easier to cool it in northern Minnesota,” Bergman said. “In the future, we would have a lot bigger opportunity to land something like that.”

The lost opportunity meant 150 jobs. But it is not just jobs at stake.

As the recession and other economic woes force governments to cut back, more and more services will be available only online, such as better and cheaper health care in which doctors in far-away cities meet with patients via video. And more business is done online every day, leaving some people out if they have no Internet service or only slow dial-up connections.

Finstad pointed to a small-town printing plant that expanded when it got high-speed Internet service, adding $3 million a year to its revenues.

Then there is the woman who lives between Sleepy Eye and St. James in southwestern Minnesota. She works for a Twin Cities area insurance company from her home only because she has high-speed Internet available.

“It is one of the top questions businesses ask when they are looking at communities,” Finstad said. “From a quality of life standpoint, it is no secret we are losing our young people to urban areas.”

Chris Swanson of Two Harbors, a city councilor and another task force member, said the key issue is to make the most important service — which he identifies as health care for the elderly — available to everyone. Swanson said the governments needs to consider providing infrastructure like it provides roads for package-delivery companies. How the Internet is delivered matters less than making sure it happens, he said.

NOT FOR EVERYONE

In Lake County, fiber optic cable is logical because forested areas make wireless less reliable. But in southern Minnesota’s farm country, wireless connections may make more economic sense.

Fiber is “like having a four-lane highway,” Swanson said, while wireless “is a real nice two-lane road with shoulders. It still delivers what they need.”

It is not financially feasible to build four-lane Inter­net highways to every home, Swanson said, although that is what Lake County plans.

County board members are still waiting to hear word on a low-interest federal economic stimulus loan it applied for to get a private company to lay fiber cable. Then private firms will be allowed to provide service over those lines. The county does not plan to be an Internet service provider itself.

Swanson said Lake County could be a model, “especially for rural areas. I think our model is one that is very sustainable. It is very healthy. It allows for business growth, at the same time puts the critical infrastructure needs in place.”

BOTTOM 20

Lowest broadband availability and speeds in state counties:

(State recommends 10 or more mps)

Percent of county with broadband, Download speed (mps), Upload speed (mps)

Cook 37 1.0 0.7

Pine 57 1.8 0.3

Kanabec 59 1.4 0.9

Aitkin 60 2.4 0.7

Mahnomen 68 2.1 0.4

Wabasha 70 4.1 0.7

Jackson 73 1.2 0.3

Redwood 74 5.6 0.7

Morrison 76 1.0 0.4

Waseca 79 5.2 0.6

Becker 80 3.4 0.5

Watonwan 80 1.5 0.4

Carlton 81 6.1 0.8

Cass 81 2.4 0.5

Clay 81 1.6 0.8

Lake 81 3.4 0.6

Pope 82 2.4 0.6

Winona 82 7 2

Isanti 83 3.7 0.6

Itasca 83 4.8 0.9

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Some examples of speeds needed for various internet uses:

High/low

1 Mbps/500 Kbps

E-mail and Web browsing

Phone calls over Internet

Low-quality video

5 Mbps/1 Mbps

View complex Web sites

E-mail with attachments

Share medium-sized files

Digital broadcast video

Streaming music

10 Mbps/5 Mbps

Share large files

Video streaming

Basic online gaming

Basic medical filing and diagnosis

Basic education

100 Mbps/10 Mbps

Telemedicine

More education services

Complex online gaming

High-definition TV

Multiple telephone lines

Music, video downloads

Most business needs

1 Gbps/100 Mbps

HD telemedicine

Government needs

Intense gaming

University research

Live video event coverage