Earlier today, I posted rankings on MN county broadband access to 25/3, 100/20 and Gig using the most recent data from the Office of Broadband Development on wireline broadband by county (Updated Oct 2023). This has been the source of data since I started doing the profiles. One of the reasons I’ve used the data from OBD is that the data informed eligibility for Minnesota broadband grants.

This year I also wanted to look at the FCC National Broadband data too because so much of future broadband funding will be coming through the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and it’s unclear what that will mean in Minnesota. For grant eligibility purposes, Minnesota looks at wireline access but the federal (NTIA) look a wired and licensed fixed wireless connection. In their draft Initial Proposal to the BEAD administrators, the Office of Broadband Development is proposing to continue with the wireline definition, but at public meetings discussing the draft proposal OBD did not sound optimistic about that happening.

So separate from the rankings I looked at earlier today, here are comparisons between the National Broadband Map “All Wired” and “All Wired and Licensed Fixed Wireless” access by county.

For some counties, there’s very little difference between to two measures. For others, there’s a big difference. The state maps below show the difference, the darker the color, the better the broadband.

I’ll dig deeper into what that means to some counties in the county profiles but wanted to share the info now. Here are top 10 counties with the biggest difference between the two measurements:

• Yellow Medicine
• Watonwan
• Murray
• Lyon
• Waseca
• Martin
• Renville
• Chippewa
• Jackson
• Pipestone

Here is the ranking for “All Wired and Licensed Fixed Wireless” at speeds of 100 Mbps down and 20 up:

And here’s ranking to all wired access: