Pine County officials and internet providers map final push to close broadband gaps

Pine County commissioners and representatives from at least five internet providers met in person and online on Oct. 12 for an update on a multi-year effort to expand broadband service across the rural county.

County Board Chair Josh Moore said the meeting’s goal was “to see what it would take to get it done,” and to gather clearer, provider-level timelines and maps showing where fiber and fixed wireless builds will finish. “When I get an email or open up a paper or something and look at it and it says we’re bottom in the state of Minnesota, this county, I look geographically at it and we have a lot of struggles,” Moore said.

The board and providers reviewed projects funded since 2021 — including local ARPA allocations, a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) coronavirus award targeted to low- and moderate-income census tracts, congressional directed spending routed through USDA ReConnect, and multiple Minnesota Office of Broadband Development border-to-border awards — and discussed the remaining “hard to serve” areas, permitting and construction-season constraints, and how to measure remaining need.

Leslie Sautter, Pine County economic development coordinator, told the commissioners she began documenting county broadband work when she joined the county in 2021 and that the county has since layered provider coverage, RDOF awards and funded projects into the county GIS. “We will highlight our major accomplishments, identify additional challenges that might still be lingering, and then hopefully come up with a plan moving forward of how we can work together with our providers to finish out the rest of the county,” Sautter said.

Provider representatives described ongoing and planned construction. Scott Savage, vice president of business development at SCI Broadband (Savage Communications), said the company has built “over 300 miles of underground fiber optic cable distribution cable to over 4,000 homes” in Pine County in recent years and is committed to further build-outs in 2025–2027 with a mix of private capital and grant funding. Savage said SCI aims for a roughly 50% initial subscription (take) rate in new build polygons and expects steady growth over a few years after construction.

East Central Energy representatives said the utility’s fiber work follows a similar pattern: build polygons and pursue grants that make the more rural sections economically feasible. One provider noted that some builds are phased and that construction pauses over winter, which explains why crews sometimes appear to stop several miles from a residence and resume in spring.

Midco, Frontier, Hometown Fiber and Starwire Technologies each reported work under way or planned for 2025–2027. Midco said its RDOF-committed areas in southern Pine County are slated to begin construction in 2026. Frontier noted that its national operations are in flux owing to a pending acquisition announcement but said that existing, awarded projects remain on schedule.

Speakers identified common hurdles: limited construction season in Minnesota, permitting delays (including DNR and state archaeological reviews), locate backlogs, competition for skilled crews, and the economics of serving very low-density pockets. Providers emphasized the central role of grant funding in making rural builds feasible and asked the county to continue streamlined permitting and clear township contacts so crews can move more quickly.

County staff said they will consolidate provider shape files and cleaned GIS layers to create a single, user-friendly map showing (a) existing coverage, (b) funded areas with construction expected to finish under current awards, and (c) areas that remain unfunded. Sautter said the county already stores RDOF, awarded border-to-border, CDBG and other project layers in its GIS and will remove outdated layers (for example, LTD/RDOF labels the county believes are no longer active) so the combined map better shows current and planned coverage.

Commissioners and providers discussed whether to run another public speed-test / survey. Some providers and county staff said prior participation rates (roughly 7–10%) were expected for voluntary surveys and that the return on additional surveying is limited where provider build maps already identify underserved locations. Several providers and the county agreed that targeted outreach — preregistration or marketing in polygons about to be built and referral of individual addresses into state line-extension forms — is more likely to increase sign-ups than a county-wide speed-test push.

The meeting produced several specific next steps rather than formal votes: providers will share shape files and construction polygons with county GIS staff; the county will produce an updated map showing funded, planned and unserved locations; township and city permitting contacts will be confirmed; and the county and providers will coordinate on public preregistration and outreach for imminent build areas so residents know when hookups will be available.

The discussion emphasized that while much of Pine County will have improved service under current grant- and provider-committed projects, “very remote locations” still require near-100% grant funding to be financially viable. Speakers repeatedly stressed that timelines are contingent on permitting, environmental reviews and the limited Minnesota construction season. Providers said they expect most active projects to complete in the 2025–2027 window but declined to commit to a single county-wide completion date.

Commissioners closed by thanking providers and county staff for years of work and asked that the consolidated maps and provider timelines be shared with the Board and the public. “We made huge progress,” Commissioner Steve Holland said, and the county will keep pressing to reach the “next really, really hard places to serve.”