Internet competition in every North Dakota county
53 counties, 324,994 residential locations, counted block by block from the FCC's own filing. The county with the worst competition score in North Dakota has fiber in every single block. The one with the best has none in more than half of them.
The finding: the worst score in the state is universal fiber
Our national study ranks North Dakota last of 52 for wired competition: 39.3% of residential locations sit in a census block where at most one wired company reports service. That number is arithmetically correct and it reads wrong, and the county view is where you can see why.
13 North Dakota counties score 99.5% or higher, holding 31,791 residential locations. 12 of those 13 have no locations at all in a block without fiber, and gigabit availability across them runs 92.6% to 100.0%. The 7 at a flat 100% are fibered throughout, every one.
The reason is on the table below, in the last column. Each of those counties is served by a single rural cooperative or independent telephone company: BEK Communications Cooperative, Consolidated Telcom, Dickey Rural Telephone Coop, North Dakota Telephone Company, Northwest Communications, Reservation Telephone Cooperative, West River Telecommunications Cooperative. A member owned cooperative does not compete with the cooperative in the next county, because it was never meant to. It built fiber to everybody in its own territory instead.
So the competition figure is measuring territory, not deprivation. A block with one company is a monopoly by any definition, and a resident there has no alternative and no competitive pressure on price. Both things are true at once, and a number that cannot tell them apart should say so rather than be quietly averaged into a national ranking.
It inverts in the cities, which is the other half of the point. Cass County has the best competition figure in the state at 5.5%, and 56.5% of its locations are in a block where nobody reports fiber at all.
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Every North Dakota county
Sorted by the share of residential locations in a block with at most one wired company, worst first. The first three columns are computed here from the block level filing. Gigabit is the FCC's own county figure, which is the finest grain they publish speed at.
| County | Residential locations | At most one wired company | No fiber in the block | Gigabit available | Widest reaching wired operator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benson County | 3,392 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 99.9% | North Dakota Telephone Company (100%) |
| LaMoure County | 2,756 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dickey Rural Telephone Coop (99%) |
| Emmons County | 2,391 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | BEK Communications Cooperative (100%) |
| Grant County | 2,134 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 99.5% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (99%) |
| Sioux County | 1,399 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 95.9% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (99%) |
| Golden Valley County | 1,243 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Reservation Telephone Cooperative (100%) |
| Slope County | 526 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 99.3% | Consolidated Telcom (100%) |
| Kidder County | 1,975 | 99.8% | 0.0% | 100.0% | BEK Communications Cooperative (98%) |
| Hettinger County | 1,955 | 99.8% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Consolidated Telcom (99%) |
| Burke County | 1,724 | 99.8% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Northwest Communications (96%) |
| Ransom County | 3,086 | 99.7% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dickey Rural Telephone Coop (67%) |
| Mountrail County | 5,893 | 99.6% | 4.7% | 92.6% | Reservation Telephone Cooperative (96%) |
| Dickey County | 3,317 | 99.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dickey Rural Telephone Coop (100%) |
| McIntosh County | 2,286 | 99.4% | 0.0% | 100.0% | BEK Communications Cooperative (52%) |
| Divide County | 1,794 | 99.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Northwest Communications (100%) |
| Sargent County | 2,316 | 98.9% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dickey Rural Telephone Coop (96%) |
| Logan County | 1,401 | 98.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | BEK Communications Cooperative (60%) |
| Sheridan County | 1,116 | 98.1% | 0.0% | 100.0% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (74%) |
| Nelson County | 2,265 | 95.9% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Polar Telecommunications Inc (61%) |
| McKenzie County | 6,457 | 95.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Reservation Telephone Cooperative (97%) |
| Pembina County | 4,383 | 87.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Polar Telecommunications Inc (83%) |
| McHenry County | 3,811 | 77.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | SRT (78%) |
| Steele County | 1,385 | 76.5% | 10.3% | 88.9% | MLGC (55%) |
| McLean County | 7,495 | 72.6% | 0.3% | 97.6% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (47%) |
| Rolette County | 5,425 | 70.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | United Communications (96%) |
| Traill County | 4,119 | 70.6% | 39.4% | 56.1% | Midco (60%) |
| Dunn County | 2,973 | 67.3% | 1.4% | 96.5% | Consolidated Telcom (88%) |
| Bottineau County | 5,084 | 66.9% | 0.0% | 100.0% | SRT (54%) |
| Billings County | 700 | 64.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Consolidated Telcom (58%) |
| Oliver County | 1,026 | 60.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (93%) |
| Renville County | 1,673 | 58.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | SRT (95%) |
| Cavalier County | 2,730 | 56.5% | 0.0% | 100.0% | United Communications (94%) |
| Towner County | 1,621 | 55.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | North Dakota Telephone Company (54%) |
| Walsh County | 6,607 | 51.4% | 32.7% | 94.2% | Polar Telecommunications Inc (67%) |
| Wells County | 2,915 | 48.7% | 0.0% | 99.9% | North Dakota Telephone Company (76%) |
| Eddy County | 1,535 | 47.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | North Dakota Telephone Company (96%) |
| Foster County | 1,916 | 44.7% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dakota Central (90%) |
| Adams County | 1,449 | 43.9% | 0.0% | 92.5% | Consolidated Telcom (91%) |
| Barnes County | 5,525 | 42.3% | 0.0% | 100.0% | BEK Communications Cooperative (86%) |
| Griggs County | 1,680 | 41.8% | 0.0% | 100.0% | MLGC (79%) |
| Richland County | 7,854 | 41.1% | 0.9% | 99.5% | Red River Communications (90%) |
| Williams County | 15,161 | 39.1% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Northwest Communications (100%) |
| Ramsey County | 5,717 | 38.6% | 0.0% | 97.2% | North Dakota Telephone Company (91%) |
| Pierce County | 2,540 | 37.3% | 0.0% | 99.8% | North Dakota Telephone Company (97%) |
| Bowman County | 1,862 | 31.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Consolidated Telcom (100%) |
| Mercer County | 5,181 | 30.1% | 0.0% | 100.0% | West River Telecommunications Cooperative (100%) |
| Stutsman County | 9,801 | 24.9% | 0.0% | 100.0% | Dakota Central (100%) |
| Ward County | 24,760 | 21.1% | 0.0% | 100.0% | SRT (94%) |
| Burleigh County | 37,362 | 18.5% | 62.9% | 84.9% | Midco (94%) |
| Stark County | 13,214 | 14.4% | 19.4% | 100.0% | Consolidated Telcom (80%) |
| Morton County | 13,629 | 14.3% | 53.8% | 53.4% | Midco (84%) |
| Grand Forks County | 21,253 | 14.2% | 20.8% | 91.3% | Quantum Fiber (84%) |
| Cass County | 53,182 | 5.5% | 56.5% | 93.9% | Midco (90%) |
The column adds up. These 53 rows sum to 324,994 residential locations, and to 39.3% and 22.2%, which are the figures we publish for North Dakota on the national study. The county rows and the state row are computed from the same blocks with the same definitions, so they cannot disagree. The build refuses to ship this page if they ever do.
Method, and what these numbers cannot tell you
Source: the FCC Broadband Data Collection, filing period D25, published July 21, 2026, reflecting service as of . Competition figures are computed across every census block in North Dakota: a location counts toward the first figure when at most one company reports wireline service, meaning fiber, cable or copper, in its block. Fixed wireless and satellite are excluded from that count and stated separately elsewhere on this site.
It is a floor, not an estimate. Coverage is self reported by providers and is known to overstate, so every overstatement moves a location out of the at-most-one group and never into it. The real figure is this one or worse.
Reporting service in a block is not the same as being able to connect a given house. A company that reaches one address on a street counts for the whole block, which is why the fiber gap column can look better than any resident's experience.
The last column is reach, not market share. It names the wired operator reporting service across the largest share of the county's locations, with that share in brackets. It says nothing about how many people buy from them.
License
This page and its table are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Republish it, adapt it, use it commercially, in a newspaper or on a government page, provided you credit WhereFiber and link to this page. The underlying counts are facts from a public federal dataset and nobody can own them; the license covers this write-up and the arrangement of this table.
How to cite this
Horvath, F. (2026). Internet competition in every North Dakota county: wireline provider counts by census block. WhereFiber. Retrieved from https://wherefiber.com/research/north-dakota-counties/
Want this for another state, or a cut we have not published? Write to contact@wherefiber.com and we will run it.
Related
- The national block level competition study, all 52 states and territories ranked
- Who can actually get gigabit internet in America, where North Dakota ranks near the top
- Every provider reporting service in North Dakota