When Kathi Shorey moved to a rural region of western Maine about 40 years ago, she knew she was giving up some comforts of life in the Boston suburbs. Her new home of Sweden, located 47 miles from Portland, didn’t have big box retailers or major universities, and its population of about 400 people could all fit into a single city apartment building.
Shorey never anticipated that decades later, her chosen home would make it impossible for her to work remotely and stay connected during a global pandemic — all because her internet service is too slow to reliably get online.
“Never did I think the digital divide would be so unfair,” Shorey said during a conversation on her landline phone, the only reliable way for her to communicate when she’s at home.
The registered nurse who now teaches a nurse’s aid class gets, at best, 3 Mbps download speeds through her service, far below the FCC’s broadband definition of 25 Mbps — a level itself that’s viewed as outdated and inadequate for…
Source CNET Tech
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