Iowa is a very short sighted state. On one hand they're trying to be this tech savvy state by bringing in Apple and Google data centers, on the other hand gett

Iowa is a very short sighted state. On one hand they're trying to be this tech savvy state by bringing in Apple and Google data centers, on the other hand getting decent broad band is terrible in all the rural parts of the state. So they did what any conservative state would do and relied upon the free market to get them high speed bandwidth. And that's not been real successful. So they had to subsidize it. From this article in 2015 [1]: "Four communications providers have received more than $53 million in federal funds to expand high-speed Internet service to nearly 90,000 rural Iowa homes and businesses." That's roughly 3% of the population. Okay, so one might say that's just the cost of doing business. The thing is that Iowa already has a $200 million dollar fiber optic network that connects all 99 counties with over 8000 miles of fiber called the Iowa Communications Network. So why don't they use that to extend broad band to rural areas? From the Iowa Communications Network home page [2]: "The ICN provides high-speed flexible broadband Internet, data, video conferencing, and voice (phone) services to authorized users, under Code of Iowa, which includes: K-12 schools, higher education, hospitals and clinics, state and federal government, National Guard armories, and libraries" That's awesome if you're an authorized user. But the sad part is there is more than just those users that could use broadband, and it seems like Iowa decided to leave them out in the cold. [1] http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/rural-iowa-getting-more-broadband-as-gov-branstad-lauds-infrastructure-spending-20150831 http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/rural-iowa-g... [2] http://icn.iowa.gov http://icn.iowa.gov