I fell upon a great blog post today by Steve Borsch at Minnov8. Spoiler alert – he says nice things about Blandin and their work to promote broadband in Minnesota, but that’s not even my favorite part of the article.

Steve tells a powerful story about the town of Forestville, Minnesota – a town that the railroad bypassed. I’ve heard the analogy made before between the railroad and broadband but I don’t think I’ve heard it done this well.

On a national level, I think that we’re at a crossroads where we’re going to pony up or get passed. On a local level, I think we’re starting to see this too. It’s not quite the same, but I work with a number of resorts and in the last 2 years most of them have installed wifi –because increasingly access to broadband is a non-negotiable, even on vacation – where at least my spouse has tried to make the case we shouldn’t be online.

Take that to the next level where you’re trying to recruit people or businesses to relocate to your community and again I think broadband is a non-negotiable and soon access to ultra high speed broadband will be the issue. If as a community you don’t have it you too may go from being a town like Forestville to being a State Park.