Midco completes 106-mile North Dakota fiber extension, enhances redundancy

Midco has wrapped up the buildout of a 106-mile, $5 million fiber network expansion from Williston to Bismarck and Minot, North Dakota, bulking up the number of locations it can serve and ensuring greater redundancy to prevent outages in the event of a fiber cut.

In the past, Midco experienced a number of accidental fiber cuts to its area network caused by construction and utility companies. The new network expansion is better designed to reroute traffic around cuts if they occur.

Midco's eco-friendly fiber installation in North Dakota's Badlands. (Source: Midco / YouTube)

Another area of focus was on reducing environmental impact during the fiber installation, especially in the Badlands region where part of the line runs.

"This is unique because it's the only two sets of plows in the United States that are doing this work and one of the unique things is that it's environmentally friendly," said Erin Hayes, Midco's director of corporate construction, in a video about the network build. "What this does is it digs down, you can experience where the plow is going, it opens up a small crack so that work is being done under the ground, meaning the vegetation within a week is back and growing."

Hayes added that "we wanted to ensure we put back the landscape as it was there before."

Fiber network expansion has been an ongoing theme for Midco. The service provider's Northern Plains Network stretches 8,400 miles across North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.

While organic network expansion is a key focus, Midco is not afraid of working with others to enhance its network reach. Earlier this year, the service provider entered into a cooperative agreement with Arvig, giving it an additional 4,000 fiber route miles to address new and existing business service opportunities in Minnesota.

For more:
- see the release
- watch this video

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