The Fergus Falls Daily Journal just ran a heartening article on broadband use in rural Minnesota. The super quick scoop is a professor from Japan came to 5 rural communities in Minnesota to study how communities are taking advantage of broadband – especially in terms of education and economic development.
She came to Minnesota because of the high deployment of fiber in rural areas. She was really impressed with how communities use the broadband to interact.
It’s a fun article. It sounds as if the people in the communities were as surprised as I was that someone from Japan would come to visit – because I think we could learn from Japan more than they would learn from us. It was nice to see that even if we’re behind in some areas – our ability to work together to make the most of the resources available is world class.
Definitely a very interesting article and working for a Minnesota-based company it definitely caught my eye. Appreciate the post.
By: Stephen Brown on June 19, 2008
at 5:20 pm
[...] How can communities – especially rural communities – help local businesses thrive despite the current economy? They need to provide them with the tools that let them play in an environment where location doesn’t matter. It’s getting to a point where it is too expensive to drive anywhere and while that will hurt in the short term, I think it is an opportunity for innovation and that’s something we still do well in Minnesota. [...]
By: Goodbye Simon « Blandin on Broadband on July 16, 2008
at 3:38 pm
[...] eloquently, is that squashing bandwidth also squashes innovation. Right now I think that America is still pretty innovative – but we’ll be slipping down that ranking soon enough if we start putting artificial barriers [...]
By: Steve Borsch on Comcast and Innovation « Blandin on Broadband on August 30, 2008
at 5:04 pm