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Cook County, at the tip of Minnesota's Arrowhead region, wants to build a fiber-optic network along its major highway routes -- Hwy. 61, the Gunflint Trail and the Caribou Trail -- that pass near where most people live.

"We see this as the next basic utility," said Danna MacKenzie, the Cook County information systems director in Grand Marais. "You can't get everyday things done without some form of broadband." Medical care via broadband connections, called telemedicine, is going to be important to the mostly rural county, she said.

For Cook and other Minnesota counties, for cities and schools that want high-speed Internet connections, the federal stimulus money for broadband is a potential $7.2 billion jackpot.

But potential is the key word. The broadband money is part of the $787 billion federal stimulus package, and it's unclear how much of it will come to Minnesota in the form of grants, loans or loan guarantees. And so far, there are no criteria for deciding who gets the money, which is likely to become available through two federal agencies this summer.

The criteria are important because of the wide range of proposed Minnesota high-speed Internet projects: Some would extend broadband to those who don't have it, others would improve existing broadband service and still others seek to make broadband more affordable by creating competition for existing broadband providers.

The lack of clarity hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of broadband project backers. In response to a preliminary request for proposals, more than 20 projects were offered to the state's Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force, some of them covering multiple cities or even whole counties.

The task force, which has no direct connection to the federal officials who will disburse the broadband funds, has forwarded the proposals to state officials and the Legislature without making any recommendations, said committee chairman Rick King, executive vice president of information provider Thomson Reuters. It isn't likely that all the projects, which range in cost from six figures to multiple millions of dollars, will be funded, he said.

State officials are awaiting word from two federal agencies that hold the purse strings: the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will dispense $4.7 billion in broadband funds, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development unit, which will dole out $2.5 billion. Both agencies are accepting public comments about how to spend the money but haven't made any decisions.

But, in an effort to get their "shovel-ready" projects in front of federal grant makers, backers of broadband projects haven't been shy about saying what they could do to merit some financial help.

Internet providers are keenly interested in the stimulus project. Superior Broadband, a unit of computer services firm Compudyne Inc. in Duluth, wants to expand to small Minnesota communities such as Carlton, Gilbert, Tower, Hoyt Lakes, Biwabik, Orr, Chisholm, Mahtowa, Moose Lake and Barnum. But even with the wireless technology Superior uses, it would cost about $500,000 per community to expand, said Patrick Malley, Superior general manager.

"We would expand to those places eventually, but this stimulus money could speed it up," Malley said.

Some projects are for local governments. Carver County wants $1.8 million to build an 85-mile fiber-optic data network that would serve county agencies and city governments in Chanhassen, Chaska, Carver, Waconia, Victoria, Watertown, Mayer, Norwood Young America, Cologne, Hamburg and New Germany.

The county would benefit because overnight data backups that now take hours could be done in minutes, said Steve Taylor, Carver County administrative services division director. But the public also would benefit because the county would share its underground fiber-optic cable conduits with Jaguar Communications of Owatonna, which wants to provide broadband services to residential and business customers, he said.

Some projects are for individual cities. Monticello sought $27.5 million for a municipal broadband system that would compete with the local telephone company. It turned to the stimulus program after its plan to use city revenue bonds was blocked by an unresolved lawsuit filed by Monticello telephone company TDS Telecom, which alleged an illegal use of city bonds to pay for the project.

In other cases, cities seek federal stimulus money to prompt a local Internet provider to expand its service area. Several cities, including Round Lake, Heron Lake, Wilder, Lakefield, Bingham Lake, Brewster and Sioux Valley have applied for funds on behalf of Windom's city-owned broadband service, WindomNet.

"These cities are in underserved or unserved areas that want us to extend our broadband fiber-to-the-home network to them," said Dan Olsen, WindomNet operations director. "It probably won't get done if they don't get broadband stimulus money."

Steve Alexander • 612-673-4553