|
|
John Twiest
Although the details aren’t sorted out yet, Arrowhead Cooperative was selected to receive $18.4 million in federal funds that will be used over the next ten years to expand high-speed broadband services in the county.
The announcement came from Arrowhead Cooperative CEO John Twiest.
Those funds will come from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) $9.2 billion that will be awarded to broadband service providers who cover 5.22 million rural residences and businesses. The money will be distributed through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and those dollars will finance projects in 49 states.
Minnesota was awarded $408 million from the program.
More than 300 Internet providers bid for the Phase 1 FCC funds, with 180 selected for projects in the RDOF Phase 1 auction.
When the bidding ended, there was $6.8 billion remaining of the original $16 billion. That money will be rolled into the Phase II auction to secure more fiber optics for rural areas.
Before Arrowhead Cooperative can claim any of the FCC dollars, General Manager John Twiest said that all winning bidders still have some hurdles to clear.
The process the FCC asked all applicants to use is called a reverse auction. Simply put, said Twiest, “The FCC had a fixed amount of money available ($16.1 billion). The reverse auction is set up such that bidders would need to determine the minimum amount of the dollars required to build out into the areas defined by the FCC. The goal of the FCC was to ensure the most competitive bidding process. Each round the bidders slightly lowered the amount of money they would accept until the total of all the bids was equal to or below the amount of money the FCC had available.
“In areas with multiple bidders, the bidding continued, with bidders lowering the amount of money they would accept each round until only one bidder remained. At the end of the bidding, $9.2 Billion of the $16.1 Billion was awarded. The FCC prioritized bids from organizations that would provide gigabit speed and low latency. Currently, we are waiting on the approval of the long-form application with the FCC.”
Supposing the funds are awarded, Twiest said it wouldn’t be until the end of summer or fall before Arrowhead can get started on the project. But, he noted, a starting date hasn’t been decided at this point.
What will this mean?
Twiest said if all goes well, Arrowhead will install both broadband and electric utilities to places that currently have access to neither, completing a dream started in 2010.
In 2009 Arrowhead Cooperative received $11.3 million to connect broadband to its utility customers who wanted it. Early on, understanding the need for Broadband in Cook County, the county levied a one percent Cook County sales tax. A portion of that was to help fund a Broadband project. When Arrowhead Cooperative was awarded the grant, they soon realized that they would need an additional four million dollars to ensure all members of the community connected to the electric grid would be included in the project, including the City of Grand Marais. When the work was completed, Cook County became one of the first rural counties to receive high-speed Internet in the state of Minnesota.
In 2010, Twiest, then an Operation Manager/ Lineman at Arrowhead Cooperative, was put in charge of installing broadband to its customers. The City of Grand Marais was excluded from the Arrowhead Electric project, but the county paid $4 million to invest in broadband for the city.
When asked about the initial build-out, John responded, “The original project took five years to complete. We took advantage of existing infrastructure and had a small army of contractors in the area to complete the build-out. That grant originally required us to have the entire system built out in three years. It was extended to five years when the USDA realized that these projects strain the supply chains and created large delays in material delivery.
“The recent FCC auction is based on a ten-year time frame with the required build-out goals. Our plans, if awarded, will be to have the areas built out in six years. Due to the nature of the construction, we will be sending the scope of work out for bids.”
It took five years of digging through (mostly) bedrock to lay the high-speed connection, but when Arrowhead Cooperative was done, about 70 percent of the county residents were hooked up to broadband.
How important is broadband?
When local schools announced they would teach school remotely, it was paramount for students to have access to the Internet.
“We collaborated with the schools to ensure that all teachers and students had broadband access, if available to them,” Twiest said. “We wanted to be sure that our children and teachers had the technology needed to achieve distance learning.”
As the events of the past year have unfolded from the COVID-19 pandemic to the rioting in the nation’s largest cities, Cook County became a hot spot for people who wanted to move here and continue working from home, which wouldn’t be possible if the county didn’t have high-speed internet available.
“We did see significant growth with new connections last year and increased bandwidth usage across the county as more folks worked remotely. We heard from some subscribers that they were connecting their second home/ vacation home because they now had the opportunity to work remotely, and given the choice, they’d choose to be here in Cook County,” Twiest said.
There is a lot of work that goes into completing all of the steps required by the FCC to qualify for one of these grants, and when asked, John acknowledged that, “The incredible team at Arrowhead, Consolidated Telephone Cooperative, Olsen/Thielen and Cooperative Network Services all played a role in the successful bid process,” he said.
Leave a Reply