Yesterday the Hutchinson Leader published an op-ed by Jack Geller, President of the Center for Rural Policy and Development. Jack talked about the three main driving forces behind recent broadband in rural Minnesota: personal entertainment, business and commerce, and public services.

I was lucky enough to talk to Jack about this last month (read more here) but I was interested to learn in this article that in 2006 as much as 70 percent of rural businesses reported that they purchased goods or services online.

Jack talks about this is the first year that broadband users seem to do different tasks than dialup users. In years past broadband and dialup users claimed to do the tasks – broadband users just did them faster.