Gov. Ronnie Musgrove challenged residents of Southwest Mississippi to realize that transportation today involves more than just highways.

&uot;The highway of communication is going to be the most important highway any of us travel five years from now,&uot; he emphasized at an economic symposium in Natchez on Friday.

Of course, that’s easy for Musgrove to say … and difficult for residents and leaders in Southwest Mississippi to swallow.

For more than a dozen years now, we’ve been waiting — patiently and not so patiently — for four-lane highways into and out of Natchez. Thanks to the Mississippi Department of Transportation’s pay-as-you-go program, which recently ran out of money, our wait has been extended until the department finds funding — somewhere.

And, with more good news coming in the announcement of a study that ranks Mississippi dead last among Southern states for computer ownership and Internet access … well, we just wonder how many more years we’ll wait to be connected to that highway.

Gov. Musgrove’s message may have flown for folks in Jackson, or the Gulf Coast or even the growing and tech-savvy DeSoto County area. But here in Southwest Mississippi, the message isn’t as well received.

We know that highways — asphalt and technological — are the key to our future economic development. And we’ve done without both for too long now.

If Gov. Musgrove is sincere about reversing the trend that has left Southwest Mississippi out of the loop for so long, then he should focus his energies on helping us get connected with all those important highways.