Aaron Brown, a great observer on the Iron Range is usually pretty upbeat. I also find his observations to be astute and always promoting innovation – so I got a little down when I read his post today (I have been to mountaintweet). The good news is that Mount Everest is getting 3G coverage. The bad news is that the Iron Range has never seemed farther away. As Aaron puts it…

Meantime, efforts to expand high speed internet access on the Iron Range more closely resemble all those guys who froze on the side of Mt. Everest years ago and who remain there today, too heavy to bring back down the mountain and too frozen to decay. All the local candidates who highlighted high speed internet in their campaigns lost last Tuesday.

The comments on his post don’t offer much hope. Bill Coleman comments…

I would not expect to see many broadband improvements come to the Iron Range anytime soon either, especially to the unserved portions. Cable companies are unlikely to expand their footprint. To make things worse in a relative sense, the bigger telephone companies are likely to spend money on infrastructure in Cook and Lake Counties and the Ely area of St. Louis County, the areas that received stimulus dollars for public broadband, in an effort to protect their market share. Those areas will have two providers; the other areas will have none.

It’s bleak. My hope is that the ubiquitous goals set out in the Minnesota Broadband bill (20Mbps down/10Mbps up) will help level the playing field – but those are just goals, not plans. (And changes in the last election might have an impact on the priority placed on those goals.) The power for change rests with the local community. Aaron’s voice is powerful but he needs local support to raise awareness and develop a strategy or they risk becoming a dead zone while their neighbors thrive.