The Northeast Iowa Telephone Company (NEIT) has endured an up-and-down journey attempting to expand their broadband internet service into Crawford County.
In the past year and a half, the company has been awarded federal grant money to bring their internet service across the river, had the award rescinded and had to reapply only to receive a far smaller area in their award.
NEIT first applied to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD) administered by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) to start a project in Crawford County in late 2024. Steve Hanson, COO of NEIT, and Dale Klemme, executive director of Community Development Alternatives, appeared at several board meetings during that time to drum up support, including the town of Bridgeport; Wauzeka-Steuben and Prairie du Chien school districts; and the village of Eastman, among others. Previous projects through Vernon Communications and the Richland-Grant Telephone Company helped bring broadband internet to large portions of the county, but there is still an area that is considered underserved.
Locations considered “unserved” or “underserved” are eligible. Unserved locations don’t have a broadband provider available to them, while underserved locations have fewer than two providers. According to the note given to the Wauzeka-Steuben Board, areas served by satellite are eligible for funding. The criteria for a provider to qualify as broadband service are 100 megabytes per second (m.p.b.s.) download and 20 m.b.p.s. upload speeds.
Hanson said NEIT, which is based in Monona, Iowa, has been interested in expanding into Crawford County for several years, and the federal grant program gave them an opportunity to make their move. NEIT serves more than 2,000 locations in Iowa with an in-ground fiber network. It also serves portions of Eastman with fixed-area wireless internet.
Initially, the project was supposed to serve approximately 1,500 locations in Crawford County with a price tag of $25 million (grant money would’ve covered 75 percent of the cost). The service area would have targeted an area between Wauzeka/Steuben over to Seneca and down to Prairie du Chien.
NEIT requested and received letters of support to obtain grant money for the project. The Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution at their Dec. 17, 2024, meeting and pledged $300,000 toward the project. At the time, NEIT planned to lease fiber cables under the Mississippi River to connect the Wisconsin area to their infrastructure in Iowa. They were also working on procuring a secondary route as a fail-safe.
This past September, Klemme told the Crawford County Finance Committee that the federal government approved NEIT’s proposal in May 2025 and then rescinded the award a few weeks later. NEIT had to resubmit their application and was awarded a much smaller area of the county going from north of Prairie du Chien to the Wisconsin River, with the majority of the 390 eligible locations being in Bridgeport. The cost of this new version of the project was approximately $4 million.
Hanson previously said NEIT wanted to get the project underway in 2026; however, it was possible the project would get pushed back to 2027.
Despite the impediments, NEIT has continued to invest in the area, and their persistence may have paid off.
This past month, Hanson and Klemme once again came before the County Board of Supervisors (as well as the Wauzeka-Steuben School Board) with a new development: An additional $60 million in broadband-deployment funding has been made available by the PSC.
An undisclosed area in Crawford County is eligible for that funding, and NEIT is applying to provide service to part of that area. The grant opportunity was announced in late May, and applications are due by July 27.
“The Northeast Iowa Telephone Company is interested in doing more work than they were initially approved for, so that’s what we’re here for today,” Klemme told the supervisors.
Hanson said their new targeted area for the grant wouldn’t be announced until September due to the competitive nature of the program. The new area NEIT is applying for will serve an estimated 420 locations in addition to the 390 previously awarded for their Prairie du Chien and Bridgeport project. The cost is approximately $6.5 million on top of the $4 million project area awarded to NEIT in 2025.
NEIT was seeking support from community and municipal entities to strengthen their application.
“What I’m here for today is not to ask for additional funding but to ask for a letter of support,” said Hanson
Hanson also presented a letter of intent waiving any right-of-way fees from the county that could be applied to the project. “At this time, our engineers don’t expect any fees to actually apply, but the intent is to get those points in the award process.”
Highway Commission Kyle Kozelka said Crawford County does not charge “those kinds of fees” for utilities, but other counties may do that.
The supervisors approved support for NEIT’s new application.
