Carver County outlines CarverLink expansion, aims for countywide gig service

Randy Lease, the county employee who manages CarverLink, told the Carver County Board of Commissioners that the county’s publicly owned fiber network has grown substantially and is on a timetable to offer countywide gig (1 gigabit symmetrical) availability.

Lease said CarverLink now includes approximately 1,200 miles of usable fiber and connects roughly 280 public-entity locations. He told the board the county operates a 50-gig backbone, of which about 30 gigabits are currently subscribed by more than 20 public entities, and that the network has about 3,200 interconnect points and five internet backbone feeds for redundancy.

The network’s origins trace to federal funding secured in 2011 and a 2013 launch. Lease described 2023–24 as “transformational”: the county added security systems, new firewalls, multi-factor authentication, a third data center, and operational changes he said make the network more resilient and easier to manage.

Lease reviewed two county construction efforts. The 2022 Connect Up Carver project was a roughly $10.5 million build; the board provided $6.5 million and the county completed connections to about 2,200 locations by Dec. 31, 2024. A follow-on expansion used an additional $2.5 million in county funds combined with MetroNet contributions to create an approximately $14.3 million project that Lease said will build the remaining rural coverage; he said the rural work should be complete by June 2025. A separate city-build portion covering Chanhassen and Victoria has a completion target of June 2026, and MetroNet is the primary private service partner on those builds.

Lease described the county’s approach as a “middle-mile” network that provides roads for private providers to use: "We provide the road, the fiber itself to some people that want to use it. And then we also provide internet services to the public customers in our network as well," he said. MetroNet, he said, has been a critical partner; Lease named MetroNet senior vice president Jeff Georges as the company liaison who helped negotiate the agreements that enabled recent expansion work.

Lease told the board that bringing a symmetrical gig service countywide involves coordination with multiple providers. He noted the city of Chaska is a remaining coverage challenge: about 12,000 locations exist in Chaska, and Lease said Quantum Fiber covers about 600 of them. Lease said Comcast/Xfinity reports roughly 10,000 locations in Chaska but that many of those Comcast connections currently do not provide symmetrical upload speeds (Comcast’s uploads were characterized in the meeting as about 35 Mbps at many locations). Lease noted a Comcast customer on Hessey Farm Road reported receiving symmetrical gig service, calling it the first such Comcast customer seen in the county.

Lease also described how the county has been agile in responding to regional requests: he provided an example where CarverLink installed connectivity for a Hennepin/Scott County project in seven days so partners could keep their schedule. He emphasized that the county owns the infrastructure and typically leases capacity to private providers rather than selling the assets.

Board members asked about timelines and costs. Lease gave the county’s timetable and repeatedly cautioned that provider market conditions change rapidly; he said some of the negotiated, low-cost arrangements the county now enjoys would be difficult to replicate in the current market.

Why it matters: commissioners and staff said high-speed, symmetrical internet supports telehealth, remote work, education and economic development. Lease framed CarverLink’s mission as serving county operations and public partners first while enabling private providers to reach customers. "If we lost connectivity through any one of the legs, two of them are still enough there to be able to support everything that we do," Lease said describing redundancy improvements.

The county did not vote on policy at the work session. Lease asked the board for continued administrative support as CarverLink finishes rural hookups and city builds; commissioners praised the team for the pace of rollout and said they will keep engaging with private providers where coverage gaps remain.