Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 26, 2018

Kris B. Mamula and Jessie Wardarski, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette;

Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health

 

"Even as businesses in Pittsburgh compete to commercialize artificial intelligence and give machines the human quality of “learning,” just a three-hour drive away people struggle with dial-up connections — if there are internet connections at all.

More than 24 million Americans — 800,000 in Pennsylvania and mostly in rural areas — lack an internet connection that meets a federal minimum standard for speed. The result is a yawning divide in commerce, education and medicine that’s splitting America into the digital haves and have-nots.

“We’re basically being cut off from the 21st century,” Huntingdon County Planning Director Mark Colussy said."