Last year, I estimated how much it would cost to get ubiquitous broadband to each county. I used number of households in each county without broadband based on percentages (and populations) from the Office of Broadband Development and an estimated cost of $9,300 per house, which is an estimate I heard at a MN Broadband Task Force meeting in November 2022. The Task Force didn’t meet most of 2023 but I thought I might use the same estimate with updated broadband rates to figure costs again. There is likely to be an updated cost per house. I suspect it might be more now due to rising prices and increased difficulty is reaching the last served locations, but I suspect the numbers are still in the right ballpark.

In March 2023, MinnPost reported on estimates for ubiquitous broadband…

State officials estimate it would cost $2.76 billion to serve the 291,000 households and businesses that lack the infrastructure for fast service. It’s an eye-popping price tag, but most of the money would not come from the Minnesota Legislature.

The short answer I’m getting below is $2,000,136,699 to serve 241,705 households. Minnesota’s allocation for the federal BEAD funding is $651,000,000.

Here are the counties with the smallest estimated bills, including three with ubiquitous broadband:

And here are the counties will the largest estimated bills…

And here’s the complete list of county’s locations, unserved households and estimated cost to expand broadband to everyone…