• 0 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
cake
Cake day: February 16th, 2025

help-circle

  • I think you might be overestimating how good internet access is in rural areas. My grandparents still had dialup in the 2010s and after were only able to get a 2mbps DSL line that never ran at its rated speed. Satellite internet was then and, even with Starlink, is still very expensive, especially for people on a fixed income. This was also in an area with patchy at best cell reception that only got worse as 4G was being rolled out. Even FM signals were patchy at the house and TV reception tanked after the digital switchover. (This is also why you may have heard about some people fighting to keep AM radio around.)

    My grandma’s main connection to the outside world was NPR on the way to work and the state PBS station that was rebroadcast from a somewhat close small college town.