The situation
Roughly 214,000 homes across the eleven Cascade counties still lack a wired connection at the FCC's current threshold of 100/20 Mbps. Sixty-three percent of those homes are more than three road miles from the nearest fiber node. In practice, the customer economics that draw private carriers into a county stop working at the fifth mile.
The federal BEAD program allocated $842M to Minnesota and $701M to Wisconsin for exactly this problem. The window to obligate those funds closes at the end of 2027. Every county that does not present a shovel-ready project by Q3 next year forfeits its share to the state's redeployment pool.
The Alliance can move faster than any single county and slower than the private carriers, which is the shape of the opportunity. This plan proposes a regional cooperative that owns the middle mile and leases capacity to any last-mile operator who serves the homes on the map.
The recommendation
Form Cascade Fiber Cooperative, an open-access middle-mile utility owned by the eleven counties in trust. Build 1,340 miles of new backbone across the five-year plan window. Lease capacity at cost-plus to any last-mile operator, including local telcos, electric cooperatives, and municipal networks, on the same published tariff.
The cooperative does not sell to households. It rents dark fiber and lit services to the operators who do. That separation keeps the Alliance out of retail service delivery and keeps every existing carrier eligible to serve the newly reachable homes.
The middle mile is the piece no one profits from at retail. That is the piece the region should own.
The program
The plan groups the eleven counties into three build phases sequenced by federal funding cycle and by permitting timeline. Each phase is a self-contained deliverable with its own operations plan.
Phase 1 (Y1 - Y2)
Four counties across the I-35 and US-2 corridors. 460 route miles. Reaches an estimated 79,000 homes and 1,140 rural businesses. Anchor tenants: three K-12 districts, two regional hospitals, and one state office campus.
Phase 2 (Y2 - Y4)
Four counties across the northern lakes region. 520 route miles. Reaches 88,000 homes. Anchor tenants include a tribal college, seven township offices, and the state DNR field network.
Phase 3 (Y4 - Y5)
Three counties in the western agricultural belt. 360 route miles. Reaches 47,000 homes and roughly 3,200 farm operations. Anchor tenants include grain-handling co-ops and county extension offices.
The financials
Total build cost across the five-year plan is $412M. Federal BEAD allotments cover $268M of that. State broadband office grants add a projected $71M. The remaining $73M is a mix of Alliance capital, USDA ReConnect loans at 2 percent over 30 years, and an anchor-tenant lease prepayment from the two hospital systems.
Operating breakeven arrives in Y6 assuming 62 percent capacity utilization across the middle-mile plant. That utilization rate is inside the range achieved by comparable regional co-ops in Vermont and North Dakota. The Alliance retains ownership of the physical plant in every scenario.
| Total build cost | $412M across five years and 1,340 route miles |
|---|---|
| Federal BEAD | $268M, obligated by Q3 2027 |
| State grants | $71M, applied for on a rolling basis |
| Alliance capital + loans | $73M, with 2 percent USDA loan pricing |
| Operating breakeven | Year six at 62 percent capacity utilization |
| Home take-rate assumption | 44 percent within 24 months of homes-passed date |
Governance and the ask
The cooperative's board seats eleven, one appointed by each county commission, with a supermajority required to sell or encumber the plant. The Alliance staffs the interim office for the first 18 months, then hands operations to a hired general manager. A rate committee sets the annual tariff by open vote.
The ask of the Alliance board is a resolution authorizing the strategy office to file the state broadband office application by June 30, negotiate the anchor-tenant lease prepayment with the two hospital systems, and post the first Phase 1 request for engineering by August 15. The full plan document, financial model, and county-by-county map is included as the appendix.
Risks the plan does not hide from
Three risks matter enough to name in the summary. First is a shift in the federal funding rules that changes the BEAD obligation window or the state matching requirements. The plan is designed to obligate funds early, which is the single most effective hedge against a federal rule change. Second is a labor shortage in fiber construction crews, which is real and priced into the engineering estimates at a 14 percent cost contingency across all three phases. Third is the risk of a private carrier filing an incumbency claim on a Phase 1 route to slow the cooperative's build. Legal counsel has reviewed each county's mapping and confirmed no eligible incumbency filing exists for the routes named in Phase 1. Phase 2 and 3 routes will be reconfirmed inside the six months preceding each build.
Why the cooperative model, not a public utility or a private buildout
The plan considered three ownership models. A single-county public utility would carry the political simplicity of one board and one budget, but no one county can absorb the middle-mile capital cost or coordinate cross-county rights of way. A private carrier partnership would move faster but would leave the plant in the hands of a single company that could sell, encumber, or under-invest in rural routes once federal funding stops flowing. A regional cooperative preserves speed without transferring public plant to private ownership, and the open-access tariff keeps every existing carrier eligible to serve customers on the newly reachable routes. The cooperative is the only model that satisfies both the funding timeline and the long-term public-interest test the Alliance was chartered to enforce.
Timing, on one page
The plan runs on the same calendar the federal timeline dictates. June: file the state broadband application. July: sign the anchor tenant term sheet. August: post the Phase 1 engineering RFP. October: award engineering contracts. January of Year 2: file the FCC and USDA loan applications. April of Year 2: break ground on Phase 1. If any of those dates slip more than 45 days, the strategy office will convene a special session with the board to review the effect on the obligation window.
What we need from the board
- Resolution to file the BEAD application by June 30.
- Authority to spend up to $180K on Phase 1 engineering procurement.
- Sign-off on the anchor-tenant term sheet before the July board meeting.
- Delegation of interim cooperative director authority to the Alliance strategy office until Y2 Q2.
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