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When it was founded in 1905, New Ulm Telecom's purpose was to get the copper telephone wire to the homes and businesses throughout New Ulm. Providing reliable telephone service was its stock in trade for more than 80 years.
Today's the name has changed -- it's now Nuvera-- and so has the mission. While it still push provides voice service for telephone customers, it has adapted to the new age of telecommunications and internet services. Instead of hooking everyone up to phone lines, Nuvera is pushing to connect each of its customer's homes to fiberoptic cable, all the better to provide high-speed broadband internet service, digital TV service, all through its network.
Its network of customers has grown as well. Over the years Nuvera has acquired companies that extend its service to Sleepy Eye, Springfield, Sanborn, Redwood Falls, Aurelia, Iowa, Hutchinson and Litchfield, Goodhue, Hanska, Whiterock, Mazeppa, Glencoe, Prior Lake, Savage, Webster, Elko and New Market.
As a regional service provider, Nuvera's capacity came under extra demand in 2020 as the coronavirus forced people to work or attend school from home. Demand on its backbone network doubled over the year, but the service remained reliable and responsive. The company helped people who needed to expand their home networks.
Through it all, the company maintained its push to extend fiberoptic cable up to the premises for businesses and residences, said President and CEO Glenn Zerbe. In 2020, Nuvera complete connecting the New Ulm business district to fiber.
"Over the last 10-15 years we've been pushing fiber deeper and deeper into our neighborhoods, and that has allowed us to keep up with the need and demand of our customers."
"We made the decision to really accelerate that, where it;'s possible and where it's cost effective to push fiber all the way to the home and to th premise."
COVID-19 has not slowed the pace of that work and Nuvera is going to keep pushing that investment in 2021.
In 2020, Nuvera was awarded two state border-to-border grants for broadband development. One grant for $385,600, paired with Nuvera's investment of $716,113, will expand service in southwest Brown County, and an area near New Ulm, extending fiber to 132 homes and small businesses.
Another grant, in the Hutchinson area, will extend fiber to 180 homes and businesses.
Zerbe said Nuvera applied for five more grants, which have all been approved.
"We are very pleased to be awarded all five grants, especially in a time when staying connected has never been more important," he said. "The grants will be utilized to extend our network and bring reliable, affordable broadband services to customers in these areas, providing Gigabit speeds via fiber-to-the home exceeding 2026 state speed goals."
Nuvera will begin offering the latest 5G Fixed Wireless technology from at least a dozen towers around Minnesota serving both its traditional customers and those adjacent to its service areas. "This record level of investment builds upon our prior years progress in both New Ulm and Prior Lake," stated Zerbe. "These efforts will help to meet the demands of our customers' increasing broadband needs now and into the future."
Nuvera overbuilt fiber to the Industrial Park on North Broadway and North Front streets and to downtown New Ulm. Downtown was done in two phases with the second one just completed. Scheduling to convert current customers is currently taking place.
Other 2020 fiber overbuilds and expansions took place in rural south of Sleepy Eye and in six residential developments and downtown Prior Lake.
Nuvera Communications, Inc. successfully obtained 21 licenses in 12 counties in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wireless spectrum auction, securing new 5G spectrum for the next ten years. The counties obtained include Brown, Carver, Cottonwood, Goodhue, McLeod, Nicollet, Redwood, Rice, Scott, Sibley and Watonwan in Minnesota and Cherokee in Iowa.
Enhanced fixed wireless towers using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) technology and 5G spectrum were installed in Elko New Market, Silver Lake and Nicollet County. This allows high speed service to remote areas, where, fiber extension has not yet reached.
Nuvera has 11 public Wi-Fi sites in New Ulm. (Twenty-one in all of its exchanges.) The latest build in 2020 was in Sleepy Eye Sportsman Park.