One of the poorest, most desperate regions in Appalachia is experiencing an economic miracle thanks to fiber run by a New Deal-era co-op

Kentucky's Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative came out of a local electrification co-op set up during the New Deal, and in 1949 it was expanded into a telephone co-op with more federal infrastructure money. Today, the PRTC has used Obama FCC funding to expand into public broadband delivery, wiring up all of Jackson and Owsley Counties, some of the poorest places in America, using a mule called "Old Bub" to haul fiber through inaccessible mountain passes and other extremely isolated places.

Fiber buildout has created an economic miracle for the people served by the PRTC; working with the nonprofit Teleworks USA (which trains people for remote work, especially tech support and customer service), the coop has created high-paying, sustainable jobs in the counties, taking local unemployment from 12-16% to below 5.5%. People work doing customer service and tech support for "Hilton Hotels, Cabelas, U-Haul, Harry & David, and Apple," and some people get paid to tutor wealthy Chinese children in conversational English ("We joke that there are going to be all these kids in China with Southern accents").

The fiber buildout cost $50k/mile, a price-tag that reflects the coop's commitment to serving every person in its region, no matter how remote. The result wasn't just hundreds of good jobs paying much higher than the counties' median wage, but also a closure of the regional "homework gap."

The region's blazing fast broadband has made it a desirable place for siting all kinds of businesses, bringing in both call-centers and a helicopter rotor factory. Read the rest