This rag-tag group of DIYers has an answer for rural Pa.’s internet problem
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Lisa Wardle
Henry McCreary and his friends were fed up.
In their part of rural Huntingdon County, access to high-speed internet was mostly limited, expensive and unreliable.
As a retired telecommunications manager, he couldn’t believe that at the same time many parts of the country were building state-of-the-art 5G infrastructure, people in his community were still stuck in the dark ages.
“It hurts the local economy. You know?” he said. “If people are going to move in this area and a lot of people like to work from home now, or you want to locate your business in this area, without viable internet service, a lot of people are impaired from being able to do such things.”
Politicians talked about the issue, but nothing was changing. The big telecommunications companies considered his area a non-priority.
People in the community began to talk. They were crane operators, welders, carpenters, and business people.
What if they came together to try to fix the problem themselves?
The Associated Press and WITF’s democracy reporter Jordan Wilkie are partnering to tell stories about how Pennsylvania elections work, and to debunk misinformation surrounding elections.
