“MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Verizon Wireless announced today it invested $132 million in 2011 to enhance its network in Minnesota, including the expansion of its groundbreaking 4G LTE network to Austin, Albert Lea, Duluth, St. Cloud and Rochester as well as more communities in the greater Twin Cities area, giving more Minnesotans access to the most advanced 4G LTE network in the world.”

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“The Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) plans to build a $15 million data center at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

MAC is soliciting bids from firms that want to construct the 10,700-square-foot facility, which will be located in the cargo area at the airport. Bids are due Feb. 14 and contracts will be awarded in March. Work on the facility will begin in April.”

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“A luxury homebuilder is planning to construct a $30 million, 36,311-square-foot data center in Minnetonka. And surprise, it’s going to look like a mansion.

The Minnetonka Planning Commission on Thursday will meet to review plans from Excelsior-based Keith Waters & Associates to build a data center for FiberPop Solutions, an Owatonna-based startup that says it wants to create 10 community-based data centers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri.”

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“Just seven months after embarking on a feasibility study to help establish Eagan as a major telecommunications hub in Minnesota, the City of Eagan is proud to announce the planned development of a new 138,000 square foot carrier neutral data center called The Connexion.

The specialized data center, known as a colocation facility, will be open to all telecommunications and internet service providers, as well as local and regional companies needing offsite data storage or disaster recovery options.”

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“Today, Governor Mark Dayton issued Executive Order 11-27, establishing the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband and continuing his commitment to strengthening our state’s infrastructure and fostering a strong business climate.   The Task Force will be charged to expand broadband access in Minnesota.  Dayton’s stated goal is “border-to-border” high-speed internet and cell phone access throughout Minnesota.”

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“MANKATO, Minn.-Enventis, a subsidiary of HickoryTech (NASDAQ: HTCO), announced it has kicked off its $24 million Greater Minnesota Broadband Collaborative Project which will further extend its middle mile fiber-optic network across greater Minnesota.

The fiber network will improve high-speed Internet access in rural communities and connect health care facilities, schools, libraries, higher education institutions and public offices with an advanced high-capacity broadband network.”

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“CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, June 27, 2011 — Involta, LLC announces plans to build and operate a 20,000 square foot hardened enterprise data center in Duluth, Minnesota.  While final approvals from local agencies are still pending, design of the facility is currently underway.

The high-security colocation data center will house mission critical computer systems and related components for healthcare organizations, businesses, government and educational institutions. The $10.5 million facility will be a stable, predictable, high-performance data center complete with environmental systems and controls, redundant back-up power, specialized fire suppression, and reinforced concrete building construction.  The 24,000 square foot facility will feature 10,000 square feet of conditioned data center space that will utilize the naturally cooler climate of Duluth to increase efficiency. The building is being designed to be LEED certified.”

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Earlier this spring, it was reported that the firm was in conversation with the Duluth Economic Development Authority.

The small bundle of routers, servers, and switches are located in the 511 building to create what is called an Internet exchange point (IXP). Using an IXP, Internet service providers exchange traffic between their networks, effectively creating shortcuts between their services. These shortcuts reduce the portion of a service provider’s traffic that must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing costs of delivery, improving efficiency of routing, and increasing fault-tolerance.

The initiative in Minnesota is spearheaded by Steve Howard of Paul Bunyan Telephone and Jay Hanke of Mankato Networks, seeded by casual conversation around one simple idea: ‘it’s pretty ridiculous that all traffic flowing between two local Minnesota service providers has to route through Chicago’. A LinkedIn group was initially created to discuss the issue, and three months later, MICE was launched.

“There are a few data centers in Minneapolis that carriers operate out of,” explains James Montz, one of the group’s founding leaders.  “The problem is that very few of them talk to one another. If you’re Carrier A and you’re trying to talk to Carrier B, traffic flows upstream to Minneapolis, then to Chicago, and then back down, increasing latency and slowing down along the way.” MICE was started to avoid of those hops, remove the latency and routing changes, and subsequently increase availability and speed — while at the same time reducing costs for participants.

There are already quite a few major midwest service providers already participating: ipHouse, TDS (which owns VISI), Enventis (Hickory Tech), CDW/Berbee, Hurricane Electric, South Dakota Networks, Northern Lights GigaPoP, US Cable, and the University of Minnesota.

The organization itself is an LLC, but its loose knit structure and management rely on donations of both time and hardware. “Our vision is to be completely non-profit,” said James.  ”Our only costs are hardware, and we’ve relied on donations for that. Because we don’t actually connect to the Internet directly, we don’t have to pay anyone for bandwidth.”

Although MICE may charge for ports in the future, the first port connection is currently free.

“TDS Telecommunications Corp. (TDS) announces the completion of a network expansion in Minnesota. VISI now offers a comprehensive portfolio of metro area network solutions, including advanced connectivity between its two Minnesota data centers.

The new Metro Area Network connects VISI data centers and key carrier hotels located within the Twin Cities metro area. This expansion will help VISI meet the ever-growing demand for both Internet bandwidth and data center connectivity driven by VISI’s recent $24 million data center expansion in Eden Prairie.”

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“Now that the National Broadband Map has been published, it is possible to analyze the accuracy of the information provided. Data-and analytics firm ID Insight compared the first version of the National Broadband Map released in February to its BroadBand Scout database, the largest independent and most complete national database of internet connectivity and usage, and identified significant differences between the two. The company has released the results of its analysis in a white paper, available at no charge here.

BroadBand Scout from ID Insight is based on more than 500 million internet transactions and is currently being used by many of the nation’s largest broadband providers, as well as state governments, the federal government and local municipalities to chart broadband availability, usage and market share.”

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