{"id":747591,"date":"2013-04-22T09:09:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blandinonbroadband.org\/?p=8521"},"modified":"2013-04-22T09:09:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:09:15","slug":"lake-county-fiber-plan-apparently-good-as-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/747591","title":{"rendered":"Lake County Fiber Plan Apparently Good as Done"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/business\/203862271.html\">Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/a>\u00a0paints a happy picture for the ARRA-funded Lake County Fiber Network\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since the northern Minnesota county won the state\u2019s largest package of federal broadband grants and loans, $66.4 million, in 2010, it\u2019s been fighting a running battle with its competitors \u2014 cable TV company Mediacom and telephone company Frontier Communications \u2014 over whether a publicly funded network should compete with private business. But the opponents were unsuccessful at stopping the project, and about half of the 1,500-mile fiber network will be built this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur funds are committed,\u201d said Lake County Commissioner Paul Bergman in an interview Friday. \u201cWe\u2019ve already applied for $40 million of our loan and grant money. It would take an act of Congress to kill the project now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They report that both Mediacom and Frontier are backing off the project. There is one potential hiccup, but even if that doesn\u2019t go well, the network will press on\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The county\u2019s only remaining challenge related to the broadband project is a $4.9 million, 2011 lawsuit over the way the county originally planned to obtain bonds for its roughly $3.5 million share of the nearly $70 million broadband network. The plaintiff, Orix Public Finance, alleged that it was initially asked to participate, then dropped from the project. It has asked U.S. District Court in Duluth for a summary judgment in its favor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<br \/>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com\/8521\/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com\/8521\/\" \/><\/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>The Minneapolis Star Tribune\u00a0paints a happy picture for the ARRA-funded Lake County Fiber Network\u2026 Since the northern Minnesota county won the state\u2019s largest package of federal broadband grants and loans, $66.4 million, in 2010, it\u2019s been fighting a running battle with its competitors \u2014 cable TV company Mediacom and telephone company Frontier Communications \u2014 over [&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-747591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-38tV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747591","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=747591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}