Last week MPR’s Dave Peters wrote about Minnesota’s strong response to the FCC request for broadband project ideas, with a concise take on the FCC’s proposed actions…

So the FCC is aiming a lot of the money at those companies to get them to improve service in their underserved areas.

In Minnesota, that’s CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream. In a few months, the FCC will make those companies an offer: Here’s X million dollars to build out better service to Y thousand residents.

The FCC is still pinning things down but the total for those three is expected to be around $86 million a year to serve some 167,000 locations in the state, according to Tom Koutsky, chief policy counsel for Connected Nation, which hosted a Minnesota-targeted webinar Thursday on the topic.

If the companies take the deal, they will commit to a substantial improvement in Minnesota’s rural broadband service.

If they don’t, it’s not the end of the story.

The FCC realizes some companies will refuse the deal, figuring the money isn’t enough for the effort required. So in January, it announced it wanted to figure out how other organizations might be enticed to extend broadband service with the money the big companies don’t claim.

It got more than 1,000 “expressions of interest,” 62 of them from Minnesota, more than any other state.

It is nice to see Minnesota rise to the occasion. I think we’re speaking up not because we are in worse shape with our infrastructure than other states – I think we’re just more aware of the need for infrastructure and the opportunity for funding from the FCC. (Also we do have a lot more independent and coop telecommunications companies than many other states. Those companies are primed to take advantage of the opportunities if CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream aren’t interested.

I know it’s a long list – but I thought I’d paste the Minnesota letters of interested below (culled from the full FCC list)…