Retiring Guy's Digest: Greetings from Meade County, Kansas, where 0% of households have access to broadband

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Greetings from Meade County, Kansas, where 0% of households have access to broadband

Source: Kansas Department of Commerce (highlight added)

Not connected and no Netflix: ‘It’s frankly embarrassing’ in these Kansas towns. (Kansas City Star, 2/8/2020)

In either case, the data seems fairly reliable for Meade County, where the state says 0% of households have access to broadband.

In the county seat of Meade, residents have access to the internet through AT&T’s old landline telephone infrastructure. And City Administrator Dean Cordes said the massive company has no interest in installing fiber to provide faster service to the town of 1,565 people.

In a word, AT&T’s service is slow, Cordes said. It gets even worse when people come home on weekday evenings after work and school.

“If you wanted to watch a movie on Netflix, you can’t do it,” he said. “It just will not load.”

Meade’s hospital, schools and city hall are all connected to fast fiber service. But the city administrator said it’s too expensive to extend that service to homes without some sort of funding assistance.

Source: Wikipedia (Meade County, Meade)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts

% of population 25 and older with bachelor's degree:

20.1% - Meade County
32.9% - Kansas
30.9% - U.S.

% of population 65 and older:

19.3% - Meade County
15.9% - Kansas
16.0% - U.S.

% of population living in poverty:

9.4% - Meade County
12.0% - Kansas
11.8% - U.S.

Very red -- voted Dem just twice; in 1916 and 1936 -- but not necessarily Trump's America. Trump received a slightly smaller percentage of the vote than Romney did in 2016.