Rural utility co-ops bringing faster internet to rural areas, but Black households are less likely to get it - Entrepreneur Generations

Broadband access has never been more important, but many rural areas lack it, or have slower broadband often installed by major telecommunications companies. Rural electric and telephone cooperatives are, more and more often, building out the fastest kind of internet in rural area, but Black households are less likely to benefit.

"Across the rural US, more than 100 cooperatives, first launched to provide electric and telephone services as far back as the 1930s, are now laying miles of fiber optic cable to connect their members to high speed internet. Many started building their own networks after failing to convince established internet service providers to cover their communities," Nicolas Rivero reports for Quartz. "But while rural fiber optic networks have spread swiftly over the past five years, their progress has been uneven. In North Dakota, for example, fiber optic co-ops cover 82% of the state’s landmass, while Nevada has just one co-op. And in the states where the utilities do exist, they tend to serve the whitest communities."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/3kltGpx Rural utility co-ops bringing faster internet to rural areas, but Black households are less likely to get it - Entrepreneur Generations

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