Rural communities see big returns with broadband access, but roadblocks persist

“For rural America there’s a major struggle to keep people and ideas in these small communities,” said a small town mayor.

A contractor building high-end houses in Minneapolis swung by Greg Hull’s sawmill on Friday, a timber operation located in deeply rural Lake County, Minnesota. The builder had seen Hull’s website and driven nearly 250 miles to the mill to inspect Hull’s high-end lumber as potential building material for his homes.

These days that’s not unusual. In the past year-and-a-half, Hull has seen orders balloon and interest grow, and a significant factor is his recent ability to gain access to high-speed internet. That's made a huge difference for the saw mill, located at the end of a power line in an area that knows only gravel roads and limited cellphone coverage.

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