In Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity ,Christopher Ali examines the reasons behind the United States’ failureto provide its rural communities with high-performance broad-band connectivity and offers a framework for bringing fibre to thesecommunities. Anchored in a combination of critical political economyand “lived policy” perspective, Ali highlights the importance ofbroadband connectivity for U.S. rural communities and examinesthe relationships between the failures of large telecommunicationscompanies, policies designed by current policy mechanisms, and thecontinued growing digital divide. In so doing, he contrasts the hugepent-up demand for high-performance broadband in rural commu-nities with the failure of U.S. policymakers and private markets totackle the rural-urban digital divide and showcases community-levelefforts aimed at addressing broadband connectivity deficits. Whatemerges is a clear and powerful demonstration of both the impor-tant role local companies and cooperatives have and can play inbridging the rural-urban digital divide and the country’s urgent needfor a new national rural broadband plan.
展开▼
