Internet speeds were awful, so these rural Americans put up their own wireless tower

From left, Rural Broadband Cooperative board members Deborah Grove and Bracken, Beck, and Diven at the cooperative’s wireless Internet tower in Mill Creek, Pennsylvania. Local residents worked together to build and maintain the tower, which became operational in October 2019, because they were frustrated with slow Internet service. — The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

Big Valley is a living postcard of Pennsylvania. Jet-black buggies hug the shoulders of its long, straight roads and knobby-kneed foals prance in fields so green they look electrified. Most signs there urge motorists to repent and rejoice, or to buy fresh strawberries from the Amish children sitting in the shade.

But one Pennsylvania tradition also plagued residents who live in this sweeping landscape: slow, unreliable, and expensive Internet service. The government couldn’t help. Private suppliers have long said improved speeds were too costly to provide for such a sparsely populated area. So a group of mostly retirees banded together and took a frontier approach to a modern problem. They built their own wireless network, using radio signals instead of expensive cable.