July 6, 2021

Next-generation fiber technology designed for everything from virtual health care to competitive gaming is coming to Sioux Falls.

Midco is investing $100 million in the Sioux Falls area to begin construction of the next-generation fiber project this year – part of a larger $500 million commitment across its footprint.

While Midco recently brought 1G download speeds, 10G stands for 10 gigabit speeds, “which to the home is phenomenal,” president and CEO Pat McAdaragh said.

“Just having around 1GB speeds, that was a major upgrade not only for us but the world, and now we’re anticipating 10G, so it’s phenomenal. Greater reliability, lesser latency, so the response time for gamers or interactive and videoconferencing, everything will get better.”

The pandemic underscored the need for enhanced connectivity, he said. Health care has accelerated its entry into virtual care, and workplaces increasingly are leaning on remote video meetings.

Broadband consumption has increased 3,000 percent in the past decade, Midco chief technology innovation officer Jon Pederson said.

“We were able to absorb the impact of the pandemic because we’ve been in this upgrade mode, adjusting to online video and gaming,” he said. “So we saw an impact and a shift in how people use the internet.”

The gigabit service has been built out for more than a year in Sioux Falls, Midco said.

Now, the upgrades for 10G across the Midco footprint will begin in southeast South Dakota, including Sioux Falls.

The areas bordered in blue are planned for this year.

“We think we’ll get that portion done in three years, and at the same time we’ll be starting in a lot of other markets,” McAdaragh said, adding the goal is to be done companywide before 2030.

Incidentally, 10G has nothing to do with 5G in the wireless world, which stands for fifth-generation cellular technology.

It also is ahead of wireless in terms of speed. So your wireless setup in a home won’t be able to take advantage of 10 gigabit service until more improvements to technology arrive.

“There’s a lot of improvement globally on the technology on that front, and we’re close to a solution we can roll out next year to improve the in-home experience,” McAdaragh said.

But 10G can offer immediate speed for businesses – everything from a gaming business to a hospital using it for remote diagnostics and advanced medical care or a corporate setting using it for an interactive video wall or even augmented reality.

“I think the way we think about a business network has changed. It doesn’t stop at the wall,” Pederson said.

“It goes into the community because there are more people working from home, and it’s the same with the education network. (It’s led to) our increased reliance on availability and more cloud-based apps, so more reliance on upload speeds. And there’s a huge gamer community out there, and they really like low latency. It can mean the difference between winning or losing a game.”

Midco serves approximately 460,000 customers in five states with 1,700 employees.

Its own workforce will see a benefit from enhanced connectivity in the home as it has flipped from being 90 percent in an office or working in the field to an arrangement where “almost everybody is still working from home,” McAdaragh said.

Once the summer is over, employees will be categorized by those who will work remote nearly all the time, those who will be partially remote and not have a dedicated space in an office and those who primarily will be in an office but be able to work from home various days.

“We’re trying to leverage it as the best of all worlds,” McAdaragh said. “We’re going to keep tweaking it until we get what I call a new flow, and hopefully it makes us a very attractive employer.”