Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021)

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Nov 9, 2025

Christopher Ali, an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, dives into the challenges of rural broadband in America. He highlights the urban-rural digital divide and critiques current policies favoring big telecom companies over local providers. Ali suggests a model for rural broadband based on historical electrification efforts, advocating for democratic, community-driven solutions. He also discusses the implications of broadband on economic growth, education, and the shift toward seeing internet access as a potential human right.

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INSIGHT

Subsidies Favor Big Telco, Not Outcomes

Federal subsidies have heavily favored large incumbents who often deliver subpar technologies like DSL or poorly provisioned fixed wireless.
Lack of accountability lets big telcos receive more funding despite failing to meet commitments.

ADVICE

Target Funds To Local Providers

Avoid funneling new federal broadband funds exclusively to large incumbents without accountability.
Direct grants and support to local co-ops, small ISPs, and public-private partnerships to ensure effective deployment.

ANECDOTE

Local Provider Feels Like A Neighbor

Michael Johnston describes Pella, Iowa getting a local broadband provider and enjoying immediate, personal customer service.
He notes the difference between local responsiveness and large ISPs' impersonal call centers.

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As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest.

Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multi-stakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

Dr. Christopher Ali is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and is also the author of Media Localism: The Policies of Place. He is a Knight News Innovation Fellow with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and former Fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His most recent research, “The Queen and Her Royal Court: A Content Analysis of Doing Gender at a Tulip Queen Pageant,” was published in Gender Issues Journal. He researches culture, social identity, placemaking, and media representations of social life at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on a book titled Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River. You can learn more about Dr. Johnston on his website, Google Scholar, on Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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