A lot of money is riding on the National Broadband Maps, as Mike Conlon reports…

The FCC released an updated National Broadband Map today and I’m ready to share the first version of a state-level analysis. This is the version of the map that will be used by the NTIA to allocate $42.5 billion in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

He looked at how all the states have fared from the first version of the map to the second map. Here’s what he found account Minnesota:

• Total locations: 2,078,739
• Unserved: 140,229
• Underserved: 3.71 percent
• Served: 89.54 percent
• This leads to a decline of $110,302,681 in funding.

(Note added June 5 at 1pm: MN numbers are for wired and the FCC are fixed wireless. I misremembered and thought the MN numbers were fixed wireless. I will run these again very soon. Hopefully today!)

But these numbers are very different than what I saw at the end of 2022 for the MN Broadband County profiles. Time has passed since October and without a doubt, some areas are better covered than they were. But for now the best comparison I can make fairly quickly is to compare county broadband status we had (from Connected Nation via Office of Broadband Development) in October 2022 and the numbers we can get today from the National Broadband Map. So we’re not looking for nuance here but anything striking. I plan to dig deeper next week but for now the striking fact is that almost across the board the National Maps just show a lot more served locations.

For example, I know Martin County recently approved funding for better broadband – but that doesn’t explain a bump from 67 percent to 98. Many other counties have similar jumps. For now I’ll just share the info and if you have any info on what would explain a big leap – or info to the contrary, please send it my way!