Let government expand Internet to rural America
About this time last century, we were more concerned about rural America getting access to electricity than we are about them getting Internet access today. New city-based electric distributors could not justify the cost of running electric wires for miles and miles out into the county and getting only a few customers.
The passage of the Rural Electrification Act in 1936 by the FDR administration resulted in 90 percent of U.S. farms having electric service by 1953. Locally, Volunteer Electric Cooperative’s rural service territory goes across the state from the Georgia line to Kentucky.
Perhaps this is the same solution for rural Internet. The electrification of farms led to the county farm becoming big business: milking machines, refrigeration, huge chicken houses and a whole lot more. Who knows what may happen once these farms get online.
However, given our current Congress and local state legislature, the solution that solved a problem 80 years ago may be out of political reach today. It is just too socialist for today’s politics to consider a solution that seemed to work remarkably well back then.