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For years, state and federal governments have made enormous taxpayer-funded investments in broadband. So after all this time and money, it’s puzzling to learn that there are still a lot of people without access to modern internet service.

We’re not talking about “blazing” speeds and enough data capacity to power a crypto operation. We’re talking about a reliable, fairly modest level of what’s referred to as high-speed performance — enough to support a small web business or allow a multi-computer family to engage in the kind of educational, commercial, telecommuting and entertainment activities one would expect from a typical household without waiting endlessly for pages or videos to load.

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This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask in 2025. Yet across the country and across New York, we’re still hearing about digital divides, both financial and geographic. It’s especially an issue in upstate rural communities, despite........

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