Rural Electric Cooperatives Deliver Broadband

Home broadband subscription rates continue to lag in rural areas, holding back local economies and access to telemedicine. The deployment of broadband networks to rural areas echoes the challenges earlier generations had ensuring that electrical networks and telephone service reached everyone. The solutions those earlier generations employed provide us lessons for today’s broadband challenges. Through the 1930s, many power companies ignored rural areas of the nation even when the federal government offered loans to serve these sparsely populated areas. As late as the mid-’30s, 90 percent of rural homes were without electric service. Working with the Rural Electrification Administration, farmer-based, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, commonly known as electric co-ops, started to bring electricity to rural farms and homes. Cooperatives are member-owned businesses. Democratically controlled and operated on a nonprofit basis, a cooperative opens membership to those who use its services. In the years after World War II, the number of rural electric systems in operation doubled, the number of consumers connected more than tripled, and the miles of energized line grew more than fivefold. By 1953, more than 90 percent of U.S. farms had electricity. Most of the electric co-ops still exist today, providing power to 56 percent of the U.S. landmass—and their importance is becoming clearer every day.