Lori Sturdevant (Minneapolis Star Tribune) takes on rural broadband this week – starting with reasons to continue support to get rural areas better broadband.

My hunch: When Greater Minnesotans say they feel “left behind,” the complaint that’s top of mind is insufficient broadband. They may fume as they drive on bumpy two-lane highways and fret about aging water infrastructure. But they’ll leave — or their kids will — if the internet service is lousy.

And they’ll warm to politicians who credibly promise to make it better.

Why is it taking so long to get fiber to rural areas?

“At first, it was because the technology had to mature,” he [Mark Erickson of RS Fiber] said. “When fiber to the home became cost-efficient, in about 2005 and 2006, it began to work.” The notion that wireless technology will eventually be an affordable high-speed alternative for sparsely populated places is in question, Erickson added. “Wireless works well in high-density places, not in the country.”

But installing fiber cables to every farm and hamlet involves a major upfront investment that’s ill-suited to the business plans of large shareholder-owned telecom companies, Erickson said. The return on those investments is too low and slow. That’s why small local companies, cooperatives and municipal providers have outstripped companies like CenturyLink and Frontier in bringing broadband to rural places, where upfront costs can exceed $10,000 per premise.

How can they get there? With state support such as the Office of Broadband Development and Border to Border Grants. Sturdevant explains the ethos that makes it possible for both sides of the political fence to see that state support makes sense.

Erickson said something that might help those who are torn. He related that when selling would-be rural subscribers on establishing the RS Fiber co-op, he often says, “If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

He isn’t referring only to individual effort. In Greater Minnesota, “do it yourself” has always meant “do it yourselves, with your neighbors.” It’s meant marketing cooperatives, rural electrification associations, municipal liquor stores, township roads, county parks. It’s meant pooling resources with one’s fellow citizens to solve a shared problem.

Think of state government as just another, bigger neighborhood pool.