Fiber in Duluth – What’s the haps?

Since this summer, I’ve seen several large, blaze orange coils of fiber optic cable being installed throughout the city. As of today I spotted some by Holy Rosary and up near Home Depot on Central Entrance.

Does anyone know if our Google overlords are trying to pull a fast one on us? Were area ISPs startled into actually building out their networks up here? Please tell me I’ll be browsing the Internet at satisfyingly fast speeds in the near future.

9 Comments

Rick F

about 13 years ago

It's the government "Obama" fiber project,  connecting schools and government buildings with high-speed Internet and a VPN interconnect. With 144 count fiber cables spread across the entire city, I would guess some company will someday use it for optical broadband services.

Baci

about 13 years ago

Yeah, damn that Obama for trying to connect schools with internet.

zra

about 13 years ago

Yes. Curse him. Curse him and his winning smile.

Bad Cat!

about 13 years ago

I know at least some of it is connecting Essentia to the new data center on Arrowhead (not sure if there are other plans for it as well).

wildgoose

about 13 years ago

The Google Fiber Project was always about spurring more high high speed internet to home consumers.

That said, Google is in Duluth.  I saw the Google Maps car coming over the bridge the other day.  They did that free car promotion with Chevrolet this weekend (DNT said Duluth was one of the smallest participating communities in the nation), and on Friday they are co-sponsoring this business workshop:

Get your Minnesota Business online with Google (pdf).

spy1

about 13 years ago

Yep, the NE Service Cooperative project.

The Northeast Middle Mile Fiber Project will make broadband services viable for a vast geographic region, creating an initial backbone that will serve hundreds of sites along 915 miles of fiber within eight counties including St. Louis, Lake, Cook, Koochiching, Carlton, Pine, Itasca, and Aitkin. A number of anchor institutions will participate in the project including state and municipal agencies, the Arrowhead Library System, SISU Medical System, Minnesota Association of Mental Health Programs, and twenty-eight public school districts. Overall, the project will impact 613,092 residents, 244,574 households, thousands of businesses and governmental agencies and 35,855 public school students from across Northeast Minnesota.

carla

about 13 years ago

You guys are so silly.

They are "Yarn Bombs."
http://yarnbombing.com/

Answers

about 13 years ago

I know not a whole lot of people are familiar with this company but it resides downtown across from Minnesota Power. 

It's a telephone company called Enventis. One of the many services it offers is fiber, which it have been offering to Duluth businesses for years. Some people may know Enventis as the company that acquired CP Internet, which many Duluth dial-up users had back in the 1990s.

The parent company is out of Mankato but there are offices in the metro area as well as Iowa. 

See more info on enventis.com.

Jdemoure

about 13 years ago

I know compudyne/superiorbroadband offers 100meg up and down internet right now for 75$...business only at this point. I have it at work, is amazing!

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