1. This article details the plight of Manchester, a small costal town that has been home to the Manchester (or Point Arena) Cable Station since 1956. This station is actually a submarine-cable landing site, which connects Japan and the US. While this site provides valuable connectivity for us as a nation, the residents of that small town cannot say the same. Over half of this county’s population doesn’t have reasonable access to the internet. AT&T controls this connection, and determined that giving back to this small community did not concern them as a business and would be a poor investment. In 2014 AT&T agreed to provide connectivity to the school district, but only provided the minimum requirements to adhere to the agreement. These abuses of power have left the community in limbo for so long that smaller ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have stepped in to help connect this community. The most prominent of these groups is called Further Reach. This provider has access to a more reliable connection than those that came previously. With smaller providers these small town residents are finally able to connect, while getting the personal investment that large ISPs like AT&T could never match.
2. This article mentioned that some residents didn’t want to be connected to the internet, and that many people had moved to that area for that exact reason. While my initial reaction is to support this new connectivity, I can’t help but feel uneasy with the nearly forced internet. My unease is rooted in the way connective resistance was brought up. It was mentioned as a sidebar, no more than two sentences dedicated to the community’s concerns, while over a page of the article was spent praising Further Reach’s work in the community. Finding out how many of these disconnected households actually want broadband would help define the need or lack there of for service. Maybe AT&T knew this, and chose not to connect the community out of respect. With the information we have, there is no way to tell.
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