After decades of broadband expansion, rural Wisconsinites still face ‘last mile’ problem

Every morning, as Mike Hesse gets ready to go out the front door of his family farm, he has a rude awakening. Right at the edge of his property stands an orange and white pole that looks like a PVC pipe. It’s a utility cap for a fiber-optic internet line that cuts through his front yard. “That’s how close fiber internet is to my home here,” he said, standing on his porch. “You got the vault 60 feet from my house, and you cannot hook us up.” Even though he mows around the internet connector every week, it’s not for residential use, Hesse said.  “I’d just love to have them connect me from that box to my house,” Hesse said, dreaming about how nice it would be to open a PDF file in under a minute. His home in northeast La Crosse County is just one of thousands across Wisconsin left in the so-called “last mile” between internet lines and home connections.