Editor's Note: This is the first of a series of stories that looks at where Marshall and the area stands when it comes to broadband Internet service, where it could go in the future, and what that future holds for businesses and residents alike.
Some cities resorted to stunts to try and get high-speed Internet service, like Duluth's mayor taking a freezing dip in Lake Superior, or Topeka, Kan., temporarily changing its name to "Google" to try and attract tests for ultra-high speed broadband. But that's not likely to happen in Marshall, John DeCramer said. Broadband is already here.
"We've got towns changing their names, trying to court Google," said DeCramer, when in Marshall the availability of broadband Internet is "well above most of these cities."
DeCramer, a Marshall businessman and current city council member, was part of a group that worked to lay the foundation of high-speed Internet service in the Marshall area.
A survey of local Internet services shows seven different Internet providers in Marshall, several offering download speeds greater than one Megabit per second (Mbps). A recently-enacted Minnesota law calls for broadband download speeds of 10 Mbps by 2015.
Improving Internet access and speed can present a challenge in rural areas, local telecommunications representatives said.
A combination of factors make it possible in Marshall, like the presence of several Internet providers available and technology partnerships with communities across southwest Minnesota.
The first steps toward better Internet service in the Marshall area were taken more than 10 years ago, said DeCramer and Marshall Community Services Director Harry Weilage. It took a lot of community education and teamwork to build network infrastructure when the Internet was just starting to gain prominence, they said.
In 1996, a group including city and county officials, businesspeople, educators and community members formed the PrairieNet Consortium for that purpose.
The consortium encouraged Internet providers to come to Marshall, and helped change the city charter to allow Marshall Municipal Utilities to become a provider as well. Partnerships with telecommunications services in Willmar and the Southwest Minnesota Foundation led to the formation of an 18-county telecommunications group.
Later, the consortium helped form a wide-area computer network joining the city of Marshall, MMU and the Marshall School District. Under PrairieNet WAN, the city, school district and utilities share information technology services and equipment.
All of those partnerships paid off in the form of technology available to community members, Weilage said.
"We're excited to see the benefits to rural Minnesota," Weilage said. The success of the programs and partnerships comes from communities being able to decide what kind of access works best for them, he said.
For example, Windom, another city served by regional technology partnerships, is set to expand its Internet service further with the help of $12.7 million in federal stimulus funding to bring its city-owned broadband service into surrounding communities.
Weilage said the idea behind PrarieNet WAN was to allow the members of the partnership to have the "bells and whistles" of Internet technology while still conserving local tax dollars.
"It's also about keeping what we have," he said.
Some of the benefits of the WAN include the Laserfiche system for archiving local and county government documents, down to online registration for Marshall Community Services programs, or streaming live video from city or school events.
"Without this partnership, we wouldn't have the capacity for streaming video," Weilage said.
"The citizens get the value of this," Weilage said, although he added he gets a lot of comments from younger residents on still more improvements that could be made.