When it comes to community-owned and operated networks, better, faster, cheaper broadband is often only one of the benefits. Some electric cooperatives, like Paul Bunyan Communications in Northern Minnesota’s Beltrami County, share profits with its members, literally paying the benefits of shared telecom ownership back into the communities they serve.
The Cooperative recently announced it was giving a $3.6 million profit windfall back to local community members. It’s the fourth such payout to local subscribers in the last seven years.
For distributions of $150 or less, a credit was applied to subscriber’s bills. For sums greater than $150, the cooperative mailed checks out to locals.
Like so many U.S. cooperatives, the Beltrami Electric Cooperative, a legacy rural electrification cooperative, expanded into broadband via Paul Bunyan Communications to support economic development. Created in 1940, the cooperative is leveraging experience in rural electrification to help inform rural broadband improvements nearly a century later.
The cooperative began offering broadband access in 1996 as Paul Bunyan Telephone. Three years later, it began the necessary infrastructure upgrades that allowed it to offer phone, high-speed Internet access, and digital television. In 2005, the cooperative expanded with fiber technology for the first time. In 2010, Paul Bunyan Telephone changed its name to Paul Bunyan Communications.
“Our cooperative continues to grow and thrive, now serving over 35,000 active members across over a 6,000-square-mile service area,” said Paul Bunyan Communications CEO Chad Bullock.
“Through steady investment and expansion, we’ve built one of the nation’s largest rural all-fiber [networks], transforming how our members live, work, and play. It’s incredibly rewarding to see that success come full circle as we share the benefits with our members.”
Locals now have the option of five tiers of fiber service: symmetrical 250 megabit per second (Mbps) service for $60 a month; symmetrical one gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $80 a month; symmetrical 2 Gbps service for $150 a month; symmetrical 6 Gbps service for $300 a month; and symmetrical 10 Gbps connectivity for pricing that varies by address.
The tiers – cheaper and faster than anything offered by regional private monopoly providers – don’t feature usage caps, hidden fees, or long-term contracts.
The cooperative also allows locals to rent a Wi-FI router for $7 a month, and a cellular connection extender for $5 per month.
This isn’t the first time that Paul Bunyan has fed profits back into the local community. In 2018 the cooperative paid back $2.2 million to local community members. In 2022, members were returned $6.3 million. Last year, the cooperative also returned another $3 million in profits back to the local community members that made the operation possible.
Paul Bunyan’s 160 local employees live and work in the communities the cooperative serves, which makes the operation more directly accountable to local needs. It’s a stark contrast from the extractive nature of many large private regional cable or phone monopolies, which often fail to adequately invest locally, while draining profits from half a world away.
More Than Just Fast, Cheap, Local Service
Electrical cooperatives that have expanded into broadband access do more than simply provide faster, cheaper, Internet access. Beltrami County is now cited as an example of how targeted broadband expansion to rural and traditionally neglected U.S. communities can catalyze economic mobility, improve healthcare, and expand opportunity.
A 2024 report by the Center on Rural Innovation specifically examined the direct benefits Paul Bunyan’s local ownership model has had on Beltrami County and the Northern Minnesota city of Bemidji, where the cooperative is headquartered.
According to the report, Beltrami County’s fiber access at 99 percent of locations far outpaces both Minnesota and the nation, thanks to the cooperative’s $100 million GigaZone project. The availability of affordable, high capacity fiber has, since 2010, netted significant growth in local-areas businesses, again outperforming both the state and the country as a whole.
“AirCorps Aviation General Manager Erik Hokuf said that the exceptional broadband services in Bemidji have made it possible to expand their business, generating $4 million in annual revenue instead of an estimated $300,000-$400,000 without fiber,” the study noted.
In addition to the growth of new businesses and revenue, analysis found that the per capita income in Beltrami County increased by 7 percent between 2020 and 2022, improvements directly tethered to the availability of affordable broadband access.
“The county has also capitalized on broadband infrastructure and strong broadband service provider partnerships to meet critical healthcare needs that help build the important foundational elements for economic growth,” the study noted, pointing to Paul Bunyan’s partnership with local health providers to improve telehealth and remote care services.
Better broadband access drove a 47 percent increase in telehealth utilization, in turn lowering costs for health care providers.
For years data has shown that affordable broadband access also improves education and occupational opportunity, especially in remote work for rural residents.
“Bemidji stands as a powerful example of what’s possible when a community comes together to invest in its future,” the analysis found. “With the right infrastructure, community partnerships, and commitment to innovation, rural regions like Beltrami County can find themselves on the path to thriving.”
The rise of municipal broadband ownership, and the shift of electrical cooperatives into affordable broadband access, can drive deep, structural benefits to local communities, even before the added benefits of the collective sharing of network profits enters the picture.
Header image of Paul Bunyan statue overlooking Lake Bemidji courtesy of Jimmy Emerson on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
Inline images courtesy of Paul Bunyan Communications Facebook page