Broadband project seeks county support
$25 million project would bring internet to underserved areas in Crawford
By Steve Van Kooten
The Crawford County Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution to support a new broadband internet project at their Dec. 17 meeting.
In addition, the supervisors voted to allocate a $300,000 contribution to the project next year.
Dale Klemme, executive director of Community Development Alternatives, Inc.; Dan Hauck, from Prosperity Southwest Wisconsin (an economic development organization) and Southwestern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission; and Steve Hanson, COO of Northeast Iowa Telephone Company, appeared before the board to request the endorsement, which is part of an application for a $1.2 billion competitive grant program for broadband projects through the federal government.
They asked the county to contribute $300,000 toward the project, which would be contingent on the project receiving the grant funding. Finance Committee Chair Gary Koch said the county will make the contribution amount with money from a TIF fund as well as funds freed up after ARPA money is applied to the salaries and benefits of qualifying employees.
The application has many requirements, including letters of support from local municipalities, school districts and public libraries. Klemme and Hanson have appeared at several board meetings over the last month seeking letters of support, including from the Wauzeka-Steuben School District, Prairie du Chien School District, the town of Bridgeport and the village of Eastman this past month.
Hanson said that NEIT, which is based in Monona, Iowa, has been interested in expanding into Crawford County for several years, and the federal grant program gave them the right opportunity to make the move.
“We’ve essentially exhausted our space in Iowa, and we’ve been looking in Crawford County for a while. We’ve had some marketing surveys done in Prairie du Chien. Ultimately, those did not result in economics that worked for us, so we’re hopeful for this project,” he said.
NEIT serves 2,200 locations in Northeast Iowa, including Monona, Farmersburg, Postville, and many others, with a 100-percent fiber in-ground network. The company also serves the Eastman area with fixed-area wireless internet.
The network in Crawford would serve approximately 1,500 locations and would have a two-year timeframe for construction after the agreement is complete.“The project that we’re proposing is similar to our network in Iowa,” Hanson said. “It would be 100 percent fiber to the home, all the way to the site of the house where it connects to a router inside the home.”
According to Hanson, NEIT’s infrastructure is entirely in Iowa, so they are currently negotiating with a third-party provider to lease fiber cables that travel under the Mississippi River and a separate provider for a secondary network route as a fail-safe.
Northeast Iowa Telephone will submit an application to get funding for the project, which has a more than $25 million price tag. Grant funding would cover as much as 75 percent of that cost. NEIT would be responsible for “at least 25 percent,” according to Hanson.
“To participate in round one of that grant program, we may have to cover more than 25 percent,” he added.
For the project’s launch, the plan is to have 100 megabytes per second download and upload speeds, which is above the Federal Communications Commission requirements (100 down/25 up).NEIT is required to offer internet services at an affordable price to get the federal funding. According to Hanson, the low-cost plan at launch will be $39.95 and will not change based on a subscriber’s consumption.
“As you know, the county has participated in projects in the past to bring broadband to underserved parts of the county,” Klemme told the board of supervisors. “This would mean we would then be able to provide reliable, affordable broadband in-ground fiber in every household in Crawford County, except Prairie du Chien.”
He added that the Prairie du Chien area was not eligible because there were already providers in the area.
Projects with Vernon Communications and the Richland-Grant Telephone Cooperative brought in-ground fiber internet to most of the county; however, there is still an internet desert in Crawford.
“That leaves us with one area in the southwest part of the county, basically from Wauzeka and Steuben to Seneca and over to Lynxville and then down to Prairie du Chien that is either unserved or underserved,” Klemme said.
He added that neither Vernon nor Richland-Grant were interested in taking on the project due to the federal regulations for the grant award. Vernon also saw lower-than-expected subscribers from their previous project in the northern part of the county.
