Blandin Foundation 2019 broadband conference MN

1. Pursuing Broadband
Partnerships
By: Terry Nelson
General Manager
Woodstock Communications

2. Woodstock Communications
 5 ILEC Exchanges in SW Minnesota
 1200 Voice Customers at peak in early 2000’s
 Completed FTTP ILEC Build in 2011
 Limited Growth Opportunities- Ag Based Communities
 Losing landlines and saturated broadband

3. How and Where to Grow
 FCC uncertainty- Need to grow the non-regulated business
 Only growth is outside our ILEC area
 Surrounded by Frontier and CenturyLink
 In 2016 we started looking at the Border to Border Grants

4. Name Branding-Recognition
 Woodstock “Telephone” Company-Outdated

5. Westbrook, MN-2016
 Why Westbrook?
 CenturyLink Provider
 No other provider, CATV provided by the city
 Customers were unhappy with service in town
 Already had fiber near for T-Mobile backhaul
 Was considered “unserved”
 Smallest town in Minnesota with a hospital-Sanford owned-needed more
bandwidth to transmit data back to Sioux Falls-Losing customers
 Westbrook Walnut Grove School- Was holding the SW Regional Conference
quarterly in town- unless they could find better broadband, they would no
longer hold this

6. Planning
 How to build a partnership?
 Lack of Funding-Small Communities do not have extra funding
 They don’t have experts on staff- Economic Development
 They hear the need but are not sure how or what to do
 Name Branding- They Don’t really know us
 Trust- How to build trust between us-the city administrators-residents
 Without the partnership/trust, the project will fail

7. Westbrook Implementation-2016
 Working with the City
 Educating the city and residents
 Who we are
 What type of technology we use-FTTH
 What FTTH can mean for a community- Economic Development
 Started meeting with the city administrators/council members
 Worked with them on completing surveys to residents and businesses with address lists,
Facebook reminders
 Free use of the Community Center to hold informational meetings, meet and greets,
technology educational meetings, Video option presentations,
 Use of Land for a remote 16x20 building
 Built in 2017- Today over 70% penetration
 Hospital
 Westbrook/Walnut Grove Schools
 Esurance

8. Balaton Implementation-2017
 Provider-Frontier-Underserved
 Residents were unhappy
 Working with the City
 Educating the city and residents
 What type of technology we use-FTTH
 What FTTH can mean for a community- Economic Development
 Started meeting with the city administrators/council members
 City Economic Development-Pushed residents to complete surverys, helped find property
for temporary office and permanent site
 Used Community Center multiple times
 Ralco-Tru Shrimp
 Built in 2018- 55% penetration

9. Additional Services Because of Grant
 Woodstock Wave Wireless
 Most of these rural customers did not have broadband or had poor broadband
 Utilizes our existing fiber
 Leased space on a cell tower in Westbrook and Balaton @ 250ft
 We are able to reach customers within a 7 mile radius
 Offering packages up to 75 Mbps
 We now can provide the whole community with broadband and not just the
town
 Voice Services (VOIP)

10. Pipestone County Wireless-2017
 Already served 1/3 of county with FTTH ILEC
 FTTH was cost prohibited for the remainder, even with 50% grant
 Build 4 new towers to offer our hybrid fiber/wireless
 Talked with Commissioners and County Administators
 Again very little funding from counties
 Helped with surveys, helped with addresses, helped with permitting, newspaper
articles
 Built in 2018 and 2019