Monday was the deadline for the Minnesota Border to Border grant applications. The Office of Broadband Development reports that they received 70 applications, totaling $50.3 million in requests and representing $112 million in total project costs. During the 2017 session, the legislature included $20 million in funds for the Border-to-Border Broadband grant program.

You can get a full list of applicants online (I’ll paste that info below too). The next step is to see if there are any challenges to the applications. Here’s more info on that from the OBD…

An entity wishing to challenge an application must do so by 4:00 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2017. Challenges will only be considered from providers that submitted updated broadband mapping data to Connected Nation in the spring 2017 data collection period. Challenges must be submitted in writing to the Office of Broadband Development, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, 1st National Bank Building, 332 Minnesota Street, Suite E200, St. Paul, MN 55101-1351. A separate challenge must be submitted for each project being challenged.

So who is asking for funds?

• AcenTek (2 applications)
• Albany Mutual Telephone Company (2 applications)
• Advantenon (6)
• Arvig (1)
• Benton Cooperative Telephone Company (1)
• BEVCOMM (6)
• Carlton County (1)
• CenturyLink (3)
• Farmers Mutual Telephone Company (2)
• Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (3)
• Garden Valley Telephone Company (1)
• Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Association (2)
• Halstad Telephone Company (1)
• Hanson Communications (1)
• Jaguar (1)
• KMTelecom (1)
• Mediacom (4)
• Midco (3)
• Midstate/TDS (3)
• Minnesota Valley Telephone Company (1)
• NU-Telecom (5)
• Otter Tail Telcom (1)
• Palmer Wireless (5)
• Paul Bunyan Communications (1)
• Runestone Telecom Association (1)
• SCI (4)
• Sjoberg’s Cable (1)
• West Central Telephone Association (2)
• Wikstrom Telephone Company (1)
• Windomnet (1)
• Winthrop Telephone Company (1)
• Woodstock Telephone Company (3)

At what speeds:

• 1 Gbps/1Gbps – 37 applications
• 1Gbps/500Mbps – 4
• 1 Gbps/100Mbps – 3
• 1Gbps/50Mbps – 4
• 1Gbps/20Mbps – 1
• 940Mbps/20Mbps – 3
• 250Mbps/20Mbps – 4
• 100Mbps/100Mbps – 8
• 100Mbps/20Mbps – 1
• 25Mbps/3Mbps – 4

Which counties are looking for funds?
(This does not indicate that the whole county is applying, usually just a portion)

Counties:

1. Aitkin County
2. Benton County
3. Brown County
4. Carlton County
5. Chippewa County
6. Chisago County
7. Cottonwood County
8. Dodge County
9. Douglas County
10. Faribault County
11. Fillmore County
12. Freeborn County
13. Goodhue County
14. Grant County
15. Hennepin County
16. Houston County
17. Hubbard County
18. Itasca County
19. Kandiyohi County
20. Kittson County
21. Lac qui Parle County
22. Lake of the Woods County
23. Lincoln County
24. Lyon County
25. Marshall County
26. Martin County
27. Mahnomen County
28. McLeod County
29. Meeker County
30. Mille Lacs County
31. Morrison County
32. Otter Tail County
33. Pennington County
34. Pine County
35. Pipestone County
36. Polk County
37. Pope County
38. Ramsey County
39. Redwood County
40. Rice County
41. Roseau County
42. St Louis County
43. Scott County
44. Sherburne County
45. Sibley County
46. Stearns County
47. Stevens County
48. Todd County
49. Wadena County
50. Wilkin County
51. Wright County
52. Yellow Medicine County

Full list – I know this won’t show up well because table can be problematic on WordPress but I wanted to include it to make it easily searchable: