An incomplete list of possible reasons:

-	A history of building networks going back to the late 1970’s, originally for long distance bypass for mainframes like MECC, TIES, MERITS.
-	School districts, cities and counties willing to build fiber over the last 15 years.
-	We were one of the first markets for DSL, which really lit the match for the burning need for more speed.
-	The conception, failure and re-use of the Connecting Minnesota project which would have built the state of MN a fiber network, but became the seed for a growing backbone after the courts stopped the State’s parts of the project and many of the building companies failed allowing the fiber to be bought by people willing to light it.
-	Fiber companies, like Access Communications, who had enough vision to add fibers for future resale while building it.
-	Companies who built and are building fiber for Verizon and other cell tower owners and like the schools are adding fibers for their own use.
-	Rural Telephone companies who built fiber by taking advantage of federal money to do so, and now they have networks to light right when the need it.

A long winter when it is dark 16 hours a day and there is little to do other than surf the web and plan to build fiber once it gets warm.

That said I still don’t have fiber to my house. :-(  It is frustratingly 1.5 blocks to the north and 1 block to the south.

--
Dan Boehlke

> On Dec 5, 2014, at 7:53 PM, Mike Horwath <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 06:14:35PM -0500, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
>> Why so much fiber in m/stp? What's there? 
> 
> Target?
> 3M?
> Cargill?
> 
> About 100 more of the fortune 1000 :)
> 
> -- 
> Mike Horwath, reachable via [log in to unmask]