Connect Minnesota released results of two surveys this week. I wrote about the Residential use of mobile broadband earlier today; now I will focus on the business use report. Here are some of their highlights…

• More than a third (34%) or approximately 49,000 businesses in Minnesota use mobile Internet service.
• Mobile Internet service is used most by businesses in the high tech sector, businesses that have 50 or more employees, and businesses located in non-rural areas.
• Communicating with current customers is the most used application through mobile Internet service.

• Rural businesses tend to use their mobile Internet services to access a wider variety of applications than non-rural businesses.

I think it’s interesting to look at the ways that businesses are using mobile services:

Rural businesses seem to use mobile for more applications than non-rural businesses. The two exceptions (where more non-rural businesses used mobile for these applications) were conferencing and online meetings and accepting real-time payments. (Use for conducting business with government was about the same.)

The report points out that this might reflect the fact that businesses in rural areas may be using mobile service as their primary access to broadband. It does make the case that adoption is not always the issue. I’m a proponent for increasing adoption – but it is a reminder that adoption isn’t always the primary problem. It’s no accident that conferencing and accepting payment each require or at least work much better with 4G access than 3G and in my experience 4G is more prevalent in metro areas of Minnesota.