Wright County is not poised to meet the MN broadband goals for either 2022 or 2026. They need to renew interest in broadband to meet those goals.

Green=served Purple=underesrved Red=unserved

Wright County has benefited from a broadband grant:

• 2017 – Midco (Midcontinent Communications) – Annandale East – GRANT $537,050
  Serving 40 unserved households, and 531 underserved households and 7 underserved businesses, in the area northeast of Annandale near Bass Lake and Clearwater Lake in Wright County with service levels to up to 1 Gbps.

Wright County is home to Monticello, one of the famous   municipal broadband networks. Monticello built their own fiber network – but in process the incumbent also built a fiber network and even sued the city. It looks like Monticello is continuing to bring in competition and looking at the numbers the providers are reaching outside the city limits.

To reach the MN broadband speed goals, Wright County will need to build a momentum, work with providers to expand and upgrade service.

Wright County could benefit from future grants. In 2019, Bridgewater and Winsted applied to upgrade service in Wright. (That doesn’t mean they will get the grant; they have only applied.)

Checklist:

• 100/20 ranking: 33 (down from 21)
• 25/3 ranking: 33
• Has worked with Blandin: yes
• Has received a MN Broadband grant: yes
• Household density: 62.2
• Number of providers: 13

Details:

• There is a matrix of Minnesota broadband adoption projects.
• Districts: CD 6
  Senate: 15, 18, 29, 30
  House: 15B, 18A, 29A, 29B, 30A, 30B
• Find your reps

I am doing the annual look at broadband in each county – based on maps from the Office of Broadband Development and news gathered from the last year. I’m looking at progress toward the 2022 (25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up) and 2026 (100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up) and will code each:

• Red (yikes)
• Yellow (warning)
• Green (good shape)