Bath Twp. man battles for broadband connection | www.daytondailynews.com

Bath Twp. man battles for broadband connection | www.daytondailynews.com: Malogorski wants to be able to show photos and videos of his work to the world online, but he has been struggling to get reliable broadband internet service for himself and his neighbors for years.

“I can’t figure out why we’re living in this hub of technology for the Midwest — Wright-Patt is the most important employer around here, so it’s very technically oriented. It doesn’t make any sense that we don’t have it,” said Malogorski, who lives on Ohio 4 between Upper Valley Road and Bath Road.

“Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is right beyond the treeline across the four-lane highway,” he said as he stood in his front yard pointing to the base, then the utility pole on his property, with AT&T and Time Warner Cable lines clearly visible above him.

This is a common example of telecommunications infrastructure disparities in the United States. Oftentimes people are located close to existing infrastructure that doesn't extend to their neighborhoods, discrediting the notion that rural areas lack infrastructure. They do have infrastructure. It's just arrayed in an incomplete, vexing crazy quilt of small "footprints" of neighborhoods with landline service and those without. That situation remains unlikely to change given the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's lack of enforcement of its policy adopted in 2015 classifying Internet service as a common carrier utility and thus mandating providers fill in the unserved pockets.