According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune…

The wireless share of the Twin Cities Internet market rose nearly 7.5 percent in the 12 months ended in March, while traditional broadband providers — Comcast cable and CenturyLink (formerly Qwest telephone) — saw their market shares decline slightly, according to a study by ID Insight of St. Paul.

From the article I can glean the following:

• Comcast had the most broadband customers in the Twin Cities (37.6 percent, or about 345,000 households)
• CenturyLink comes in second (27.8 percent, or about 255,000 residential customers).
• Wireless broadband – they include the cellular providers and the Minneapolis Wi-Fi network — ranked third (16.6 percent, or about 152,000 households).

The growing prevalence and popularity of smartphone and tablets is one reason given for the include in wireless access. And 4G is expected to have a greater impact yet.

The article includes a quote from CenturyLink’s Tyler Middleton, which I think is a good take on broadband platforms…

“It’s certainly clear that wireless devices are changing the way we do things, but we see them as complementary to wired broadband connections, not mutually exclusive,” Middleton said. “We continue to see wired broadband subscriber growth” because it offers more consistent speed and reliability than wireless data services.

There was another interesting perspective voiced by Dan Hays of PRTM Management Consulting…

“It’s very difficult to have pervasive wireless broadband coverage,” Hays said. “Areas that are less densely populated probably will still need wired broadband connections for many years to come.”

It seems to me that wired is even more difficult in sparsely populated areas – but again I think the solution will be a hybrid plan of both wired and wireless broadband.