Story County, Iowa Put Up $100,000 and Brought In More Than $10 Million to Wire Its Rural Homes

In July 2026, Story County finished the planning half of a five-year job. The county announced that resources are now secured to bring accessible, affordable broadband to 100% of its unincorporated areas — every farmhouse, acreage and rural address outside the county's towns. Much of the building's already done. The rest has money, named providers and no finish date, and the distance between those two sentences is the whole story.

Three different facts hide inside the announcement, and they aren't the same fact. Secured means the grants are won and the providers are named. Built means fiber in the ground and service switched on — much of the installation's done, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the county. Still to come means everything else, including Franklin Township, northwest of Ames, where Mediacom won state funds earlier this year and hasn't published a build schedule yet. On this desk, announced, funded and shipped have never been synonyms.

Story County's $100,000 match brought in more than $10 million in state funds

The county's own money in the deal comes to $100,000. Story County put up that sum in American Rescue Plan Act funds as the match behind grant applications its local internet providers filed with the State Department of Management – Division of Information Technology, and the effort brought in more than $10 million in state funds. Run the division and the shape of the project changes. Nobody sells a countywide broadband network for $100,000. Story County didn't buy the network — it bought the leverage: for every $1 of county money on the table, more than $100 of state money followed it into the ground in Story County.

The sequence matters as much as the ratio. County officials started in 2021, working with the Ames Regional Economic Alliance and the county's local providers to work out how broadband could reach every county resident. The match came next, then the applications, then the state awards. A fixed wireless system is also being built in north-central Story County with county support, for the pockets where the fiber maths fails hardest — a signal sent through the air from a local point instead of a cable buried to every door. Five years on, the funding map has no blank spaces left. The build map still does: the county's own release puts the remainder over the next couple of years.

Sparse farm country is exactly where fiber stops paying for itself

Linda Murken, chair of the Story County Board of Supervisors, states the problem plainly in the Tribune's reporting: pockets of the county still have no broadband service at all, and access runs thin because the homes are spread out, with too few households on a mile of road to spread the cost of laying the fiber. A mile of buried fiber costs roughly what a mile of buried fiber costs. On a town street, hundreds of subscribers split the bill. On a rural Story County road, a handful do, and the handful's share never gets small enough for a provider to build on spec. Rural residents asked the county for help, and the county changed the maths instead of waiting for the maths to change.

Murken's reason for bothering is a Tuesday reason, not a ribbon-cutting one. "Adequate broadband is essential for our children to complete schoolwork, for parents to be able to work remotely and for just about every form of communication these days," she told the Tribune. She added that without it, rural areas lose ground competing for residents and businesses, and rural residents miss the access to government and commercial services that urban residents take as read. In the week, that reads as homework finished at a library parking lot, a work laptop tethered to a phone, a county form that assumes a connection the applicant hasn't got. Broadband in a place like this isn't a streaming upgrade. It's the difference between doing Tuesday at home and doing Tuesday somewhere else.

Four local providers split the county, and Mediacom took the last township

Huxley Communications Cooperative — HuxComm — covers southern Story County. Colo Telephone Company, ColoTel Fiber, covers the east and the centre. Minerva Valley Telephone Company covers the northeast and northcentral parts. Stratford Communications covers the northwest and northcentral parts. These are the locally owned and operated providers Murken praised in the county's release — she called the cooperation the county received from them "outstanding."

Franklin Township, northwest of Ames, is the exception and the tail end. Earlier this year Mediacom — the one national name on the map — was awarded state funds to build out service there, and it's currently finalizing its implementation plan. Murken told the Tribune she expects Mediacom to announce its schedule for the township soon. Nobody's published a month, a season or a year for Franklin Township, and this piece won't invent one. A resident there has a funded promise, a named provider and a plan being finalized. What a resident there hasn't got yet is a date to circle.

Secured funding isn't the same thing as a switched-on connection

Read the county's announcement the way this desk reads a company's launch post, and the honest version is still a good story — just a more precise one. The planning phase is complete: after five years, every unincorporated area has a funded route to service. The construction phase is partial: the south and east carry most of the finished work, a fixed wireless build is under way in the north-central part of the county, and the remaining areas are scheduled only as loosely as "the next couple of years." The service phase — a rural household actually ordering, installing and using a connection — trails both, address by address, as each segment switches on.

Keeping those ledgers separate isn't pedantry. A family in Franklin Township making plans around a connection that hasn't been scheduled is making plans around a press release. Story County, to its credit, printed the loose wording itself, and its announcement survives a strict read — which is more than most broadband announcements can say.

Libraries are lending hotspots and devices to families who are still waiting

While the build runs, the county has funded a bridge for the households the fiber hasn't reached. County officials worked with the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation to secure a grant from the Story County Community Foundation for the Story County Digital Equity Initiative, a programme that lets local libraries loan hotspots and devices to families without adequate internet access. A hotspot doesn't settle the question a buried fiber line settles, and nobody in the county's release pretends otherwise. It does mean a student in an unbuilt township can finish the schoolwork Murken's quote is about tonight rather than in two years — the waiting's still real enough to need its own programme.

Another county can copy the match, and it can't copy the five years

The receipts, in order: 2021, a county asks its regional alliance and its local providers how to reach everyone. The county puts $100,000 of federal relief money on the table as match money. The local providers carry the applications to the state. More than $10 million in state funds come back. July 21, 2026, the county and the Alliance announce the planning complete — resources secured for 100% of the unincorporated areas. July 24, 2026, the Ames Tribune reports the same figures and the same loose ends. Any county in the country can copy the first four lines of that ledger next quarter; the structure sits in the open, in a press release and a local paper, free for the stealing. The fifth line is the expensive one. Murken's release describes providers who met with the county numerous times across those five years, and five years of meetings is the part of the machine that doesn't arrive in a grant cheque.

Franklin Township has the money, the provider and the plan being finalized. It hasn't got a date yet — and after five years of receipts, that gap between funded and finished is the honest headline for every county watching this one. If your county's still holding its first broadband meeting, send whoever runs it this page and ask the only question that starts the ledger: who's putting up our $100,000?