The MN House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee Meeting heard from Office of Broadband Development. You can see the video below, the PPTs and questions. At a high level, OBD talked about the history of the department, especially the last year and the status with federal funding.

Q: If someone has satellite, can they apply for Line Extension?
Yes – we don’t consider low orbit satellite to be reliable broadband.

Q: How much funding is federal funding?
$130 million – and BEAD is $652 million and Digital Equity is $12 million.

Q: Are we seeing anything at the federal level?
We are monitoring. We were concerned about treasury dollars. We are committed to staying the course.

Q: Is Minneapolis eligible for deployment funds?
Our job is to make sure there is one good provider. We do know that what is reported and what people are getting but we are not the regulatory arm. We send people to the FCC to report issues.

Q: I don’t see much info on Digital Equity program. What’s the state’s definition of digital equity?
We are developing a plan but we need the federal government to approve it. We take into consideration elderly, rural and more. We are focusing on getting Navigators. We are also looking at devices. There’s a lot of planning for the plan.

Q: We like to learn more about plan that was approved and how can we engage with OBD to make sure digital equity is equitable.

Q: With 10 years of grant experience, now you have to take in federal money. DO you have money to administer the federal funds?
There was some funding in the BEAD allotment. We have access to that funds. We are partnering with other departments to make sure they are staffed up too – for permitting and more. But every dollar for admin is a dollar not in infrastructure.

Q: Are providers OK with federal funds and the rules involved?
We work with all of our providers. We know there are concerns. We built the program to be as close to Border to Border model as possible – but we also had to adhere to federal rules. I am trying to get folks to pre-qualify for grants. Folks can ask for waivers. I have to server everyone. I’d hate to have a provider not participate and then invite another one to go into the area.