Gunflint Lodge owner argues wilderness needs high-speed Internet, too

• Bruce Kerfoot

Bruce Kerfoot says his Gunflint Lodge near Grand Marais hurts because he does not have access to high-speed Internet. He took part in a Tuesday broadband summit in Minneapolis. (Don Davis / Forum Communications)

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MINNEAPOLIS — Gunflint Lodge is a place Minnesotans go to get away from the modern world, but owner Bruce Kerfoot says there is one modern amenity that he absolutely needs to maintain a strong business: high-speed Internet.

Kerfoot told a high-speed Internet summit Tuesday that he needed just two minutes to book a room online at a remote Swiss resort. But no one from Switzerland, or anywhere else, can book a room online at his Northeastern Minnesota resort because the area does not have high-speed Internet, also known as broadband.

Kerfoot said he needs what a west-central Minnesota county is launching: high-speed Internet service for every resident who wants it. Lac qui Parle County in far western Minnesota just received a federal loan and grant to run cable throughout the county, which within three years will give high-speed access to all.

Pam Lehmann, executive director of the Lac qui Parle County Economic Development Authority, said the 8,000-population county will end a long trend of losing population once the broadband is in place.

The two stories at a Tuesday meeting hosted by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar told of an urban-rural technological split, as well as different Internet development rates within rural Minnesota.

Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told of federal plans to extend high-speed Internet to nearly everyone across the U.S. However, even though money already is being spent, as in Lac qui Parle County, the officials could give no goal for completing the work. In fact, Genachowski said not everyone in Washington and state governments think it is important to provide broadband everywhere.

Don’t tell that to Kerfoot. He likened broadband to building the interstate highway network and electrifying the country, both government-funded operations.

Current dial-up Internet service to the Gunflint Lodge area is “half-baked,” Kerfoot said.

Looking north to Banff in Canada, Kerfoot said he sees a similar resort packed with Japanese tourists who can book rooms online.

“I haven’t had a foreign visitor this year,” he said.

A consortium of organizations is working to improve Northeastern Minnesota’s connectivity, but it can’t come too soon for Kerfoot.

“We have come close to being second-class citizens,” Kerfoot said.

Lehmann said that is what her county is working to avoid.

Federal officials awarded Lac qui Parle a $9.6 million loan and grant Aug. 4, giving the county three years to make sure even the farmer at the end of the road can hook up to broadband.

High-speed Internet means the county will begin to grow after years of decline, she promised, with people in their 30s and 40s able to move there because they will be able to work via high-speed Internet.

Farmers Mutual Telephone cooperative already has a quarter of the county’s homes on broadband and will connect the rest with the new federal money.

“We are very confident that we will see an influx of new businesses,” Lehmann said.

Bernadine Joselyn of the Blandin Foundation, which is working with 80 rural communities to improve Internet connections, told Klobuchar’s meeting that new information shows 64 percent of residents in nonmetro Minnesota have high-speed Internet connections. While that is up from 6 percent in 2001, “this new essential utility” is needed in more places, she said.

Genachowski said that the U.S. was last among 40 countries surveyed about how rapidly they were developing broadband.

“Standing still on broadband is falling behind,” he said.

Genachowski said broadband will become a necessity when rural Americans, in particular, learn that they can be treated by doctors in big cities without driving to the cities.

“This is what’s going to wake people up,” added Rick King of Thomson Reuters, who headed a state broadband task force.

Don Davis reports for Forum Communications Co., which owns the News Tribune.

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