Dan Olsen, director of operations for Windomnet in Windom, MN., will be in Cook County Thursday, Feb. 10, to talk with county business owners and managers about the opportunities that will come with Arrowhead Electric's fiber optic broadband network and how businesses might best make use of them.

Dan will speak to businesses at 11 a.m. in the Arrowhead Electric conference room in Lutsen  and at 2 p.m. in the commissioners' meeting room at the Cook County Courthouse.

All those involved in any way with any kind of business in Cook County are invited to attend and hear Olsen. County, city and township officials also are invited and encouraged to attend.

By June, Arrowhead Electric will begin stringing fiber optic cable that eventually will connect every home and business in Cook County to a high speed, high capacity Internet network. As director of one of the nation's first fiber-to-the-home networks, Olsen knows well the issues and opportunities that soon will confront Cook County businesses as they consider how best to take advantage of the opportunities the Arrowhead network will make available.

Olsen's visit to Cook County is sponsored by Cook County Higher Education and the University of Minnesota Extension's Center for Community Vitality.

Dan Olsen is   Director of Operations, City Of Windom, Telecommunications. Branded as Windomnet.    Windomnet is one of the first in the nation to deploy Fiber To The Home to every building in the City.  Windomnet is a strategic partner with Southwest MN Broadband Services.  SMBS was the recipient of a broadband grant and loan to build broadband services to eight communities, interconnected to the City Of Windom Network Operations Center.

Prior to working in Minnesota, Dan spent seven years as Telecommunications Superintendent for the City of Harlan Iowa, Successfully launching Broadband, Cable TV and Telephony operations.

Dan is a telecom industry veteran with 27 years of experience including Launching the first residential broadband service in the city of Chicago and remote Lake Almanor, California.

We are in the midst of busy times with all of the broadband projects in the region.

Arrowhead Electric and Pulse Broadband are finishing up their fieldwork in preparation for a spring construction season. They are also busy identifying who their service partners will be and working on the details of those agreements. Joe Buttweiler and the rest of the Arrowhead team are working to keep us informed through their cooperative website at http://aecimn.com, and their blog at http://arrowelec.wordpress.com/. They also recently visited WTIP's First Thursday Radio Program to talk with Jay Anderson about some of the things going on with their project. Here is the link: http://wtip.org/drupal/content/first-thursday-dec-2-moving-broadband-cook-county-update

North East Service Cooperative (NESC) held a regional update meeting on December 1st. Their project is proceeding as scheduled. They  have released the construction Request for Proposal (RFP) for 2011. The closing date is December 15th. Here is a link to more details: http://www.nesc.k12.mn.us/broadband/rfp . The Cook County portion of the NESC project is not slated to be built until 2012.

The Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) Program is underway. Nine proposals were received by community organizations for projects that demonstrate the use of broadband. The MIRC steering committee is currently working with all nine proposers to fund portions of their proposals. We hope to start seeing those projects get underway in January. Each organization will have two years to complete the projects. We will publish updates throughout the project period on progress and lessons learned.

Another set of components of the MIRC project focus on training opportunities. Cook County Higher Education and the MIRC steering committee are working together to coordinate a series of training events over the course of the next two years that will range from the very basics on how to use computers and the internet, all the way to advanced on-line video production techniques. These events will be co-sponsored by a number of MIRC partners, including UMN Extension, MNSCU, MN DEED, and others. Watch for more details in the coming weeks.

More details on the individual projects coming soon!