Cellular and Broadband Access in the Rural Northland

Jon Bredeson

March 19, 2021

The digital divide has long been noted as an issue in Minnesota, but the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the realities of broadband and cellular inequity in rural communities across the state and spurred calls to solve such inequities. This piece evaluates the status of cellular and broadband services in Minnesota, with an emphasis on efforts in rural areas of northeastern Minnesota. While the current wave of conversations and news articles suggests the possibility of closing the digital divide, the historical legacy of the divide in Minnesota and questions about the best approaches to solving access issues suggest the need for thoughtful and thorough efforts to avoid perpetuating the same inequity-cycles of the past.

Cellular Towers and Service Providers

When discussing the digital divide, cellular service is generally less considered than broadband access, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In contrast with the large number of news articles on broadband, there is a dearth of consideration of cellular signal service related pieces. This is surprising in part because cellular service is still (and has long been) less consistent in rural areas compared to urban locations, and plans for faster 5G cell service expansion in Minnesota have only focused on the Twin Cities metro area.  

The table here tallies the number of cellular towers across the counties of northeastern Minnesota. Data was compiled using the data maps available at cellmapper.net, searching for towers by provider with a 4G-LTE network (accessed between 8/17/20 and 8/21/20). Due to the larger population size of Duluth, MN compared with other towns and communities across NE Minnesota, data for Southern St. Louis County has not been included here.

These numbers illustrate the inconsistent and inequitable distribution of towers and service provider options throughout rural counties in northeastern Minnesota. While the listed counties vary in both geographic size and population, even in comparable examples there are noticeable differences. For example, despite population differences, Lake and Cook Counties share similar topography and industries, including tourism, yet feature very different totals (including service options from AT&T in Cook County).

In some instances, it appears that a greater quantity of towers occurs in a given county due to the county’s proximity with major infrastructure. For example, Pine and Kanabec Counties are located directly next to each other, but the former has more towers (37 towers total) than the latter does (11 total). It is worth noting here that Interstate 35 runs through Pine County, but does cross into Kanabec, as it moves south to the Twin Cities metro region. The proximity to the interstate results in an increased number of cellular towers across all providers in Pine County. In other cases, greater quantities of towers occur closer to larger population centers, as with clusters of towers located around Brainerd Lakes area in Crow Wing County (which accounts for their high totals in comparison with the counties around them).

While cellular inequity has generally been less discussed than broadband access, plans were announced in late 2020 for a new cellular tower that would provide service to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Gunflint Trail area in Cook County, MN. However, few other projects have been announced across the state. The lack of new projects perhaps owes to the disputes and controversies that historically have come with the creation of cellular towers. Indeed, their creation can also financially burden the taxpayers in communities where they are built.

As legal resources are increasingly designed for smartphone access and compatibility, it is worth turning more attention to cellular connectivity in rural communities. However, the issues around the creation of such resources also suggest the need for sensitivity in addressing the concerns of residents, and financial plans that do not economically burden rural communities.

Broadband Internet Access

Broadband inequity has long been recognized as a problem in Minnesota. In 2008, Minnesota established High Speed Broadband Task Force to explore broadband access issues. In 2011, these efforts became the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband, established by then Governor Mark Dayton to assess the “needs and use of broadband in Minnesota” across a variety of systems (including education, health care, industries, and tribal nations, among others). Per then Governor Mark Dayton’s initial executive order, the task force was to include “a balance of broadband interests” that included “rural area counties.” Mark Dayton’s executive order was supplanted by another new order in 2019 from Governor Tim Waltz.

Despite years of task forces dedicated to the issue, gaps in broadband access persist across the state of Minnesota, with a 157,000 households in rural areas that remain underserved.

Task Force goals have often been lofty and gone unmet. For example, the original task force had a goal of all Minnesotan’s having statewide broadband access by the year 2015. These unmet goals mean that many communities, including many rural ones, have long faced digital inequity. The 2020 Task Force Report notes there has been some improvement on narrowing the divide in recent years, but also that access percentages are still lower in rural communities, and that in some cases, upload speeds previously thought sufficient “can no longer be considered high-speed broadband.”

There’s little doubt on the importance of expanding broadband in rural communities. Even prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Minnesota was approving funding for broadband expansion. Post-pandemic, funding at both the federal and local government levels continues to focus on closing the broadband digital divide. The necessity for improvements to rural broadband access has even led the creation of groups like the Minnesota Rural Broadband Coalition. Minnesota continues to fund efforts at rural broadband expansion, but not without questions or concerns, including the hiring of a controversial company to do broadband installation work. In other cases, time-schedules for broadband expansion provide no immediate relief. A series of expansion projects from Paul Bunyan Communications are expected to begin this year throughout northern Minnesota, but will not be completed until spring of 2022. The questions of competency and timelines are further compounded by the fact that Minnesota has frequently failed to meet its past upload/download speed quotas, with the expectation they will fail to meet them again in the future, raise doubts about the effectiveness of current broadband expansion efforts.

Conclusion

The digital divide resonates deeply in the broader research efforts of the Northland Project.

State designed legal resources designed for low income pro se litigants nearly always necessitate the use of a computer or smart phone to access, with an emphasis on digital forms and eFiling. I have personally spoken on these matters of digital access at multiple talks and speaking engagements with law students and legal scholars. In these presentations (ironically conducted via zoom, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic), people ask me if I think that the current issues of the digital divide will change or improve in rural communities as the older generations and populations are replaced by more tech savvy generations. The hopeful answer is that yes, it will improve. But even if it improves over time, the issues directly affect people now in a variety of ways. Assuming that tomorrow will fix today’s problems has never served anyone well. The digital divide is also just part of the larger problem--the attention currently being paid to the digital divide in is a necessary start, but only a piece of the larger work ahead in fixing the broader range of rural inequities.

For Further Reading:

Andrew Perrin, “Digital Gap Between Rural and Nonrural America Persists,” Pew Research Center (May 31, 2019), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/31/digital-gap-between-rural-and-nonrural-america-persists/

Governor's Task Force on Broadband, “Annual Report of the Governor's Task Force on Broadband,” December 2020. https://mn.gov/deed/assets/2020-bbtf-annual-report_tcm1045-466512.pdf

Minnesota Office of Broadband Development, https://mn.gov/deed/programs-services/broadband/task-force/

Minnesota Rural Broadband Coalition, https://mnruralbroadbandcoalition.com

Vince Robinson, “No Longer a Luxury: Minnesotans Need Broadband Now More Than Ever,” Minnesota Reformer (Apr. 1, 2020), https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/04/01/no-longer-a-luxury-minnesotans-need-broadband-now-more-than-ever/