The two telephone companies servicing Cook County provide high speed Internet service to many, if not all of their customers.

Qwest, which services western Cook County and Grand Marais, provides DSL high speed service to customers within three miles of its Grand Marais office and is presently adding expanded six-band service to its business customers in the Tofte-Lutsen area. The expansion doesn’t include residential customers, but company spokesperson Joanna Hjelmeland says there is future potential for residential DSL in the West End, but with no time frame.

CenturyLink, which provides telephone service to eastern Cook County (Hovland and Grand Portage) and the Gunflint Trail, offers DSL Internet in the East End, including two major customers—the U.S. Customs operation at the Canadian border and Grand Portage Lodge and Casino. It has plans in place to extend DSL service to its Gunflint Trail customers.

“We are committed to providing high speed Internet service to all of our Cook County customers,” says Carrie Amann of CenturyLink. “But in order to service the Gunflint Trail, we need to meet Qwest at a connecting point.”

While Qwest declined to comment on the Gunflint Trail situation, both companies noted that the connecting point is many miles up the Gunflint Trail where Qwest doesn’t have customers. The company would receive no additional customers for extending its lines to the meeting point.

Andy Schriber, director of government affairs for Qwest Minnesota, says the company participated in a statewide Broadband Task Force that set goals of providing high speed service throughout Minnesota by 2015. However, the company hasn’t yet applied for federal stimulus funding to expand high speed coverage, though it may do so for the next round of stimulus grant requests.

The company doesn’t have specific plans for expanding high speed service in Cook County, but Schriber says they have made significant, recent investments within Minnesota. The high costs of expansion in rural areas is challenging.

“In hard-to-serve areas, we need to make our money back,” he says. “In rural areas, there needs to be some level of population density to recover our costs.”

While Qwest did not take a position on Cook County’s failed November referendum to create a public telephone company funded in part with local sales tax proceeds, Schriber said the company “finds it a little odd that the county is levying a tax on our customers and plans to use that tax to set up a network to take our customers away.” County officials never approached Qwest regarding a private-public partnership, he said.

“The county is focused on other options,” Schriber said. “Our existing infrastructure could be used to reach the outlying areas and it would cost much less than what the county is considering.”

While he understands the frustration of Cook County businesses wanting to upgrade their Internet service, Schriber says Qwest, like those small businesses, must make business decisions. The high cost of expanding high speed Internet service must be balanced with providing the service to customers at a competative price point and staying current with rapidly changing technology. And just because you build the service doesn’t mean the customers will come to use it.

“There is no guarantee we will have customers,” Schriber said, adding that “take rates”—the number of customers who choose to take an Internet service when it is offered to them—are comparable to the regional average, which is significantly less than projections he’s seen from advocates for a public Internet utility in Cook County.