Paul Bunyan Communications has been awarded a $3.9 million State of Minnesota Border-to-Border Broadband Low-Population Density Grant to serve areas of Alango, Field, and Sturgeon Townships in St Louis County.
The Low-Population Density Program will fund up to 75% of eligible project costs to help providers build out broadband infrastructure in some of the more remote or costly-to-serve areas of the state with the cooperative investing the remainder to expand its all-fiber optic network to these areas.
The Alango, Field, and Sturgeon Townships are west and southwest of the city of Cook. This project will include a total of 420 locations with a total cost of $6,023,265. Funders in addition to the State of Minnesota include St. Louis County Broadband Infrastructure- $400,000, IRRRB Broadband Infrastructure-$400,000, Alango Township-$41,200, Field Township-$17,800, Sturgeon Township-$40,000, and Paul Bunyan Communications-$1,200,108.
“We are thrilled to continue our expansion efforts, bringing high-speed broadband access to underserved areas in our region. While our cooperative has a strong history of expanding our network to underserved communities, it has become more challenging to do so independently without grant assistance due to the costs involved and low density of population in these rural areas. Thanks to the Low Population Density Grant program, we will now be able to extend our services to these areas, providing broadband speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second and making them part of one of the largest rural Gigabit networks in the nation,” said Chad Bullock, Paul Bunyan Communications incoming CEO/General Manager.
Paul Bunyan Communications expects to develop the expansion plans over the next year and will contact locations along the upcoming expansion routes once those plans are finalized and before construction starts.
“We are excited to receive this grant! It will bring symmetrical fiber-optic broadband to highly rural areas that are in critical need of it. This will be a game changer for these residents and businesses,” said Leo Anderson, Chief Technology Officer of Paul Bunyan. “We are grateful to the State of Minnesota for launching this low-density pilot grant program, which makes this expansion possible. We also extend our thanks to St. Louis County, the IRRRB, the impacted townships for their financial support, and our state officials who have championed funding for the Border-to-Border broadband grant program.”