I’m less than 5 miles from a University and less than 20 miles from a city with a met pop of well over a million. It’s just bizarre. Not sure who your satellite provider is, but I use Ground Control. The service has never gone out, even in a blizzard, but with the cap and the speed it’s unusable for anything but the basic services. And it’s horrendously expensive.

I just spoke with someone in Grand Marais yesterday. We’re on a planning committee. We’d like to meet remotely – but he has satellite and the inherent latency makes it difficult to use most conferencing tools. I assume the latency it what’s keeping you from working very effectively too.

I wish I had some advice – but perhaps just getting the message out there will help. As you say, the demand is there to make the investment in broadband worth it in your area. If the providers could keep from fighting for low hanging fruit in the Twin Cities and spend the marketing money in infrastructure your area (and many other rural areas) they too would reap the benefits!