BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Brown County officials are negotiating a $27.2 million loan that they hope will bring high speed service to almost all residents.
The county is working with Bug Tussel, a Green Bay-based internet provider, which specializes in bringing services to rural communities.
Bug Tussel has worked similar deals with 12 other counties, including Kewaunee, Menominee, Oconto, Calumet, Fond du Lac and Waushara. It is eyeing deals with 18 other counties, according to co-founder Scott Schneider.
The deal with Brown County is in the early stages but could mean most of the county will have high speed internet within 18 months to three years of the deal’s finalization.
By FCC standards, high speed internet is 25 megabytes.
If you live in rural Brown County, chances are your internet service right now is either slow or nonexistent.
“You see a lot of circles on the screen. Yeah, there is a lot of wait times,” said Tom Kempen, the chairperson of the Town of Morrison.
Kempen tells FOX 11 an example of how poor internet service is in Morrison comes from the recent primary election. At the end of the night, town officials put their election machine in someone’s car and drove around, hoping to catch enough of a signal to send results back to Brown County officials in downtown Green Bay.
“So, now you’ve got a person in a car with an election machine and all the scrutiny around elections that’s going on right now, driving around looking for connectivity.”
Connectivity was never found, so Kempen says officials drove a flash drive to Green Bay to get county officials the results.
“At the same time, they ran into the clerk of Holland doing the same thing, Town of Glenmore. This area, there is no Verizon coverage, and that’s our service provider for elections. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
The county hopes a solution is coming with its tentative deal with Bug Tussel, which calls for the installation of a 270-mile fiber network, along with 14 fixed wireless sites. 95% of houses in the county would be reached with internet speeds ranging from at least 25 megabytes to about 1 gigabyte.
“We are putting in the budget getting past 15,000 homes that are along the route as we weave throughout the county,” said Schneider. “We put right in our agreement with the county that we will charge no more than $2,500 for another carrier to connect into this network with a significant amount of capacity.”
“This is the best proposal that we’ve heard, and we’ve been trying to help the people of Brown County for years,” said Richard Schadewald, a Brown County supervisor who chairs the county’s rural broadband committee.
Bug Tussel says for three years it would lock in wireless speeds (25 MB) at $50 a month and fiber service at $62.50 a month.
“In a rural area, you’re not going to have the wealthiest people living out in the rural areas and, so, affordability is key,” said Kempen.
The proposal also brings 911 infrastructure that the county was planning to spend $10 million on.
Terms of the 30-year loan are to be determined, but the county is looking at the possibility of giving Bug Tussel the $27.2 million through sales tax revenue.
Pat Buckley, chairperson of the county board, expressed concerns about the proposal during a committee meeting Thursday evening, including whether the use of sales tax money could delay other county projects.
County officials said ARPA money saved from not having to use the $10 million on 911 infrastructure could be used to pay for 2023 projects that were going to be paid for using sales tax revenue.
The county board still needs to sign off on the deal, which could be put to a vote within the next two months.
County officials discussed the possibility of having a public informational meeting on the topic.
