How Midco is approaching network deployments in an evolving landscape

Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Midco is a regional service provider that serves about 400,000 customers in five states. The company is a joint venture of Comcast and Midcontinent Media and provides cable, internet (including gigabit speeds), and telephone services in the Dakotas, Minnesota and parts of Kansas and Wisconsin. Midco participated in the recent $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunities Fund (RDOF) reverse auction, winning several million dollars in RDOF awards to build out service within its area. While Midco does utilize both wireless and wired network (and received Connect America Fund support to build out wireless specifically in some underserved areas), “All new builds for us are now fiber, unless it’s extremely remote,” said Midco’s Chief Technology Innovation Officer Jon Pederson. As Midco considers potential areas of build-out and where to pursue funding opportunities, “We are only doing things that are adjacent to our existing fiber network. We’re not going to pick an island off in some state where we’re not. That’s been a strategy for us, and it helps us leverage the connectivity we already have,” Pederson says. “We like to use the term ‘edging out.’"