{"id":743018,"date":"2013-03-15T13:17:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T17:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blandinonbroadband.org\/?p=8372"},"modified":"2013-03-15T13:17:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T17:17:36","slug":"free-trial-of-broadband-roi-84-customer-retention-in-itasca-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/743018","title":{"rendered":"Free trial of broadband ROI? 84% customer retention in Itasca County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two questions I hear a lot in the broadband world: How can public and private work together? How can we encourage non-adopters to subscribe to broadband? I think the following story answers both\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Through MIRC funding, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kootasca.org\/\">KOOTASCA Community Action<\/a> supported a project that sought to bring computers and broadband connectivity to Native American student families in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isd317.org\/\">Deer River School District<\/a>. They partnered with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcsforpeople.com\/\">PCs for People<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulbunyan.net\/\">Paul Bunyan<\/a>, the local broadband provider to make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>There were 28 PCs for People refurbished computers available at no charge to these families along with a paid 10 month subscription for Internet service for 24 families through Paul Bunyan Communications. The families qualified for free and reduced price lunch. The project ended December 31, 2012.<\/p>\n<p>As of January, 2013 the households picked up the cost of the Internet at the regular rate from Paul Bunyan Communications. To date in March only 4 households have dropped their Internet service from Paul Bunyan Communications\u2026.an 84% retention rate.<\/p>\n<p>KOOTASCA helped to facilitate the project between PCs for People (a nonprofit), the school and the local provider. We\u2019ve had stories of similar projects in <a href=\"http:\/\/blandinonbroadband.org\/2012\/10\/15\/reducing-rates-to-get-low-income-folks-online-in-smart-investment-for-providers\/\">Thief River Falls<\/a> and other areas \u2013 but it seems like the kind of straightforward plan that bears repeating.<\/p>\n<br \/>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com\/8372\/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com\/8372\/\" \/><\/a> <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?resize=1%2C1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two questions I hear a lot in the broadband world: How can public and private work together? How can we encourage non-adopters to subscribe to broadband? I think the following story answers both\u2026 Through MIRC funding, KOOTASCA Community Action supported a project that sought to bring computers and broadband connectivity to Native American student families [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-37ia","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}