MinnPost recently published a story on rural broadband – and the need for better broadband. It’s great to see rural broadband get the attention of the mainstream new sources. It’s good to see this happen before, during and after legislative season.

I think the writer (Gregg Aamot) does a note job of describing the need for better broadband up and down the supply chain – from builder to buyer for thriving economic development. He tells a few stories, but the Crystal Cabinet tale best exemplifies that need for a better connected change of economy…

The company ships its cabinets across the United States, from customers just a few miles away in central Minnesota to celebrities in Hollywood. Yet the viability of Crystal Cabinet Works, which employs 430 people and projects growth of 20 percent over the next three years, depends, in part, on the random patchwork of Internet service in Minnesota.

Currently, the company pays for separate Internet service at each of its three locations in and around this city of 4,700, which sits in both Sherburne and Mille Lacs counties. Some of its Internet capacity is hosted by servers in the Twin Cities. Its drafters, meanwhile, are limited by bandwidth constraints, as are the dealers who use the Internet to share kitchen and bath designs with the company.

All of those layers result in extra costs, delays and less productivity, said Sandy George, the company’s IT director. “At some point, if this is not addressed soon, it will become a serious business issue,” she said.

In numerous pockets of rural Minnesota, some close or even in the Twin Cities region, many businesses and residents live with unreliable, slow or expensive Internet service, a problem that affects all sorts of people, businesses and agencies …