Earlier this week I reported that St Paul was named tops for residential download speeds. Today I learned that St Paul has been picking up tech businesses like hotcakes. According to the Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal, Instrumental Inc., Microsoft’s Regional Office and Cray have moved into St Paul recently. It just seemed worth juxtaposing those tidbits.

I have listened to Rick King many time talk about why broadband in Minnesota is important to an organization such as Thomson Reuters. It’s not because they are concerned about their corporate connection – providers will always address those very high end needs – but because they have wanted to have a workforce that could work as effectively from home as in the office. It’s not just a matter of convenience – it’s redundancy plan, it’s a more palatable way for employees to attend meeting in different time zones, it keeps employees off the roads at rush hours and improves the corporate carbon footprint.