MN Broadband Task Force Jan 2025: unveiling the MN broadband annual task report

The MN Broadband Task Fore met to discuss the annual report. Unfortunately, the audio was not good for the first half of the meeting. I’ve done the best I can to follow the conversation. It looks like they got three legislators to attend the meeting; one attended remotely.

There was a quick update on the upcoming legislative session, which is very unsettled as the makeup of the legislature is still being decided.

Agenda (I’ve posted any slides below.)

10:00 a.m. – 10:05 a.m. Welcome
Teddy Bekele, Chair, Minnesota Governor’s Task Force on Broadband

10:05 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Task Force Annual Report and Legislative updates with State Representatives: Senator Putnam, Chair Agriculture, Broadband, and Rural Development, Representative Anderson, Chair Agriculture, Broadband, and Rural Development, Representative Hansen, Chair Agriculture, Broadband, and Rural Development.

The Task Force report is available online. There was some discussion about the recommendations.

Questions:

Senator Putnam asked questions about BEAD.
Bree explains the difference between BEAD and Digital Equity funding.
Dakota County wants to know what’s going on with urban areas.

11:00 a.m. – 11:05 a.m. Approval of minutes from December 2024 Task Force Meeting

11:05 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Office of Broadband Development Overview + BEAD and Digital Opportunity Updates with Bree Maki, Executive Director, OBD, Diane Wells, Deputy Director, OBD and Hannah Buckland, Digital Equity Program Lead, OBD

Working on closing out older grants. Round 10 has 110 active projects.
They are hiring more people.
Working through contractor list.
Working with Dep of Labor on certification programs born of the last legislative session.
Hosted two webinars last week.
Will be hosting BEAD office hours on Tuesdays.
Still waiting for preliminary list of BEAD eligible addresses. Looks like 81,000 locations should be eligible, unfortunately, the new report indicates that 162,000 households lack access to basic broadband speeds of 25/3 Mbps.
Minnesota orgs got 2 of the 24 recent NTIA competitive grant awards
Working on getting pre-qualification process for grants by end of January.
Looking at March for first round grants. The first round can prioritize fiber; the second and third rounds lower the bar.