Broadband 'as important as textbooks'

ST. PAUL -- Many rural Americans compare providing high-speed Internet connections to the years when telephones and electricity were moving into rural areas.

"To me it is the rural electrification of this era," Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., told experts on the subject he gathered Thursday in St. Paul. "If you go to rural Minnesota ... if you are not wired there, it has all kinds of implications."

Franken and others at the roundtable said providing the Internet through fast broadband connections is even more important than wired telephones and electricity.

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