This month, construction work will ramp up in Boulder Junction.
It’s a tangible step toward providing fiberoptic broadband service to hundreds of homes and businesses in the town.
But that’s not the only good new broadband advocates in Boulder Junction got recently.
Fifty-eight broadband expansion projects across the state were awarded grant funding by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.
Out of those 58, Boulder Junction got the largest award, claiming $2.2 million to fund Phase 2 of its broadband expansion plan.
Combined with state money it got for Phase 1, the town has now been awarded more than $3.8 million.
“The week leading up to the announcement, we just started to get the instinct that maybe we were a good enough application that we would be fully funded. Lo and behold, on the 19th of March, we learned that we were fully funded,” said Bill Niemuth of the Boulder Junction High Speed Broadband Expansion Committee.
The grocery, convenience, and outdoor sports store could accept credit cards and access its servers.
But it’s not always like this.
Coontail Market in Boulder Junction.
Credit Ben Meyer/WXPR
At least once a week, said owner Steve Coon, there is some sort of internet issue.
“It happens way too frequently with DSL, which is the product, of course, that most rural areas have,” he said.
Coon said internet service is not only slow, it’s unreliable.
“Everything that we do is pretty much broadband-based. When the broadband goes out, it’s obviously a problem,” he said.
Internet outages force the store into a workaround to take credit cards and mean its servers struggle to connect with the second Coontail location in Arbor Vitae.