1 in 4 Rural Americans Lack Access to Broadband. How can we fix that?

[@DavidMacKinnonfromNY2AZ]

This would have been a cool video to watch for 2020. For that June, we moved to Sierra Blanca, TX (or actually 25 mi north on ranch land, with a purpose in turning it into a homestead), a rural small town east of El Paso (88 mi east for Sierra Blanca and 113 mi east for the land to El Paso). Not only did we not have broadband service, we couldn't get an established cell service (even 4G LTE was difficult to get). To get any kind of cell service, we had to make the 25 mi drive into town. Gas got really expensive fast and making the drive to make the phone useful really seemed pointless unless we could get the money to put up a cell tower on the land (which we didn't have). The whole idea of the homstead eventually flopped, lost the land, and we ended up moving back to Arizona to the most populous metropolitan area and capital in the country.

[@rodneyhartings9517]

I can say that the company I work for is currently working hard trying to use some of this COVID relief funding to try and expand our service to more of the rural areas in our community, wireless or fiber. It is difficult though as counties and townships have been given this money to use and obviously sometimes they have other thoughts when the money comes in. No matter we continually look for ways to expand into communities underserved to provide them fast and reliable connections for the future, it's just extremely expensive to build and as a small company there is only so much you can do.

[@lindsayjones1359]

We have antennas for television, radio, and free access for both, but none for internet, so you figure it out . . .

[@tc739]

The rich companies in Silicon Valley could fix this in a heartbeat if they cared

[@donhgr]

$200,000 for a line and equipment for say 10 customers past. Never going to happen with that particular technology