Long story short, I have two rankings for the MN County Profiles this year. One is based on MN data and maps from MN Office of Broadband. The other comes from the FCC National Broadband Maps. The big difference is that the FCC maps track fixed and wireline broadband and the MN maps I have used do not. (The MN Maps can track fixed and/or wireline; I chose to use their wireline maps.) BEAD defines a house with access to a fixed connection (at the right speed) as served; Minnesota focuses on wireline. (I wrote more on the difference between the fixed and wireline in 2023. In the 2023 County Profiles, I looked at both national and MN maps.)

All of this is in preparation for the MN County Profiles. There are so many moving pieces. My plan is to post the MN ranking for access to 25/3, 100/20 and Gig in three separate posts. Then, I will follow that up with three posts on the FCC National Broadband Maps. It’s a lot of information but I think it’s valuable and for archival purposes, I think it’s best parsed into separate posts. I plan to post all of these today.

For now, here’s a sneak peek of the results.

[The links below were added once the ranking posts went live.]

Links to Minnesota Ranking:

• Access to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up
• Access to 100/20
• Access to Gig

Links to National Ranking:

• Access to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up (see below)
• Access to 100/20
• Access to a 1000/100 access