Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission awarded $100 million dollars in federal pandemic relief money to projects expanding fiber broadband access.

This comes at an especially crucial time. Work-from-home and virtual schooling have become increasingly common, even as nearly 22 percent of Wisconsin’s rural residents don’t have reliable internet access. Governor Tony Evers has declared 2021 as the “Year of Broadband Access.”

Rural broadband is also a banner issue for Monday host Patty Peltekos. Today, she speaks with media studies professor Christopher Ali about rural internet and his new book, Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity.

Christopher Ali is an associate professor in Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Media Localism: The Policies of Place (University of Illinois Press, 2017) and Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021).

Cover photo: Rural broadband equipment near the city of Cook, Minnesota by Tony Webster, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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