Minnesota Office of Broadband Development 2023 Annual Report

The Office of Broadband Development (OBD) is located in the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. OBD was created by statute in 2013 and just completed its tenth year of work on its mission to improve access to broadband service that meets the state’s speed goals, serving the needs of anchor institutions, and expanding the skills and knowledge needed to use these services. Border-to-Border high speed internet access is the goal throughout Minnesota. 2023 milestones for the Office included:

• The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced Minnesota’s BEAD allocation to be $651,839,368.00
• MN Legislature approved an additional $50 million each year - FY24 and FY25 for broadband infrastructure and increased the cap on individual grant award amounts for traditional Border-to-Border to $10 million
• Held 17 regional and 2 virtual Digital Opportunity Listening Sessions
• Submitted Five-year Action Plan and Digital Opportunity Plan to NTIA
• Submitted Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Initial Proposal Volume 1 and 2 to NTIA
• Updated broadband availability maps in October and provided broadband availability analysis to over 400 constituents