Lake County Opens Bids for RUS-Funded Fiber Network
Minnesota’s Lake County is seeking bids by Nov. 2 for Lake Connections, a fiber broadband network that got about $66 million in stimulus funding in the early 2010s, the county said in a Friday official notice published in the Northshore…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Journal. The county last month got a $3.5 million opening bid by Pinpoint Holdings for the network that was built with a $56 million loan and $10 million grant from the Rural Utilities Service. The $3.5 million bid will be the baseline bid for the public sale process, said County Administrator Matthew Huddleston. Lake County owes RUS about $48.5 million, but they executed a memorandum of understanding “in which RUS agreed to accept the sale price of Lake Connections in full satisfaction of the outstanding indebtedness owed to RUS,” said Huddleston. In 2011, Mediacom challenged the RUS Broadband Infrastructure Program project as not financially viable, prompting a congressional investigation (see 1303140055 and 1205070046), and former RUS administrator Jonathan Adelstein, now Wireless Infrastructure Association president, testified that the government would seek full repayment of the loan to Lake County in event of a default (see 1205170068).