Kevin Hardy

City leaders told residents in Spring Hill (KS) that their notoriously unreliable internet service would soon improve, igniting hope that they could effortlessly stream Netflix or pay the bills online without relying on a mobile hot spot. But recently in some quarters, hopes for fiber optic internet at every home and business have twisted into suspicions over how the city government operates.

The internet service was so bad at Citizens State Bank in Cottonwood Falls that its computers could hardly handle a routine update from Microsoft. So not too long ago, bank vice president Matt Lindamood loaded up the PCs and drove them over to Emporia, 30 minutes away. There, he connected the desktop computers to a fiber internet connection. “What we couldn’t get done here happened in a matter of minutes there,” he said. Such is life for a small-town Kansas bank — and most everyone else, for that matter — as politicians talk about the need to improve rural broadband year after year.