Wireline Competition Bureau announced the entities provisionally selected for Rural Broadband Experiments. That list includes some Minnesota companies. According to the FCC press release…

This Public Notice announces the bidders that have been provisionally selected for funding in each category, subject to the post-selection review process. Each identified bidder must complete certain steps in order to be authorized to receive Connect America Fund support for its rural broadband experiment. …

• 19 entities seeking support to build networks that are capable of delivering 100 Mbps downstream and 25 Mbps upstream to all locations in the project census blocks in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, and Texas.
• 12 entities seeking support to build networks capable of delivering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream to all locations in the project census blocks in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
• 9 entities seeking support to build networks capable of delivering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream to all locations in project census blocks that are extremely costly to serve in California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.

At first I was a little put off by the fact that Minnesota has companies in only one category – then I realized that one category is the *one* that really offers broadband connectivity. (I get that 10/1 Mbps is better than nothing but not better than 100/25 Mbps!)

Here are the Minnesota-related companies/projects that were listed: