Sawyer County committee endorses Bertram Communications for BEAD application

A Sawyer County committee voted to endorse Bertram Communications’ application for Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding to serve unserved broadband service locations in parts of the county. The committee approved the endorsement by voice vote; the endorsement will be sent to the Sawyer County Board for consideration.

The endorsement matters because BEAD awards are allocated by broadband service location (BSL). A staff member told the committee that if a provider applies for BEAD money for a BSL area without competing applicants, that applicant would receive the BEAD award for that area; if multiple applicants apply for the same BSLs, the Public Service Commission (PSC) will adjudicate awards. The staff member said: "if we endorse 1 company for a BSL and another company for a BSL, then neither company gets the benefit of our endorsement on their application."

Sarah Lawrence, manager of strategic partnerships at Bertram Communications, presented the company’s background and projects. She said Bertram is a family-owned company that began as a fixed-wireless provider in 2003 and later expanded into fiber through acquisitions and in‑state builds. Lawrence described past grant work for other counties, including constructing emergency towers under CARES Act grants and completing a buried fiber project in parts of Door County that she said cost about $3,000,000 and serves about 1,000 customers. She also said Bertram built eight towers in 90 days for Jefferson and Dodge counties under CARES Act funding, work she described as roughly a $6,000,000 effort.

Lawrence described planned BEAD applications limited to towns the company agreed not to overlap with prior Sawyer County endorsements. She said Bertram would apply only for specified towns (which she named during the meeting) and noted surrounding counties had taken different stances: some counties had already issued endorsements to other providers, some had not, and some had not had time to consider endorsements before application deadlines. Lawrence said Bertram has some county endorsements in hand for other areas and that Bayfield County was scheduling an emergency meeting on the matter.

The committee discussed geographic overlap with previously endorsed providers (named in the meeting as Mosaic, Novato/Novato (as referenced in the presentation), and Bevcom). The staff member explained that the committee has been strategic in prior endorsements to avoid “competing endorsements” and that overlapping endorsements can cancel each other’s local advantage. The staff member also explained parts of the county with concentrated unserved BSLs—primarily in the southeast portion of the county near the towns the presenter identified—are the likely focus of any BEAD-funded work.

Lawrence described Bertram’s service plans and community offers: symmetrical residential fiber plans at price points she listed (250/250 Mbps for $47.99; 500/500 and 1 Gbps symmetric plans referenced), and an offer to provide a free drop and free monthly service to community anchors such as town halls, fire departments and EMS if those anchors are passed en route to BEAD-eligible locations; other anchors (schools, libraries, health care facilities) would receive a free drop but would be required to pay for a monthly fiber plan. She also said Bertram uses a combination of its own construction arm (5 Star Energy Services) and vetted local contractors and that the company maintains multiple statewide locations to shorten response times for outages.

After the presentation, a committee member moved to endorse Bertram Communications; the motion was seconded and approved by voice vote. The committee chair noted that, if the County Board approves the endorsement at its 6:30 meeting, a resolution and letter would be provided to Bertram. The meeting later went into a closed session on unrelated acquisition and economic development matters under Wisconsin’s open meetings law.

Votes at a glance: The committee approved a motion to endorse Bertram Communications for a BEAD application by voice vote; no roll-call tally of yes/no votes was recorded in the transcript.