Thank you to the helpful readers who make me better, as always. The other day, I wrote about the MN State Broadband grants and I was confused by some of the numbers. I corrected the blog within 10 minutes of posting (thanks to awesome help!), but I know some of you get this in email. So, I want to highlight the right numbers:
- Grant total budget: $67 million
- Total awarded for Border to Border grants: $37 million
- Total awarded for Low Density Pilot: $30 million
- Total grants awarded: 30
- Total applications: 88
The Office of Broadband distributed all the awards they could. But as has happened in the past, there simply wasn’t enough funding to go around. The legislature budgeted $100 million for broadband for the biennium. They spent $67 million in this last round; that leaves $33 million for the next round. (I’m using round numbers here and above.)
It looks like some new folks applied this year. The new rules for the Low Density Pilot project (higher requests, and lower match from application permitted) opened the door to new opportunities. I’m sure many quality applications were left unfunded because of the budget and the competition will be tighter next time around.