The vulnerabilities of rural Arizona communities to being disconnected from broadband Internet access for inordinate amounts of time have exposed life-and-death scenarios, an inability to develop new avenues of revenue for municipalities and a historic migration of young people.
In general scope, there are several access points to fiber-optic spurs providing access to high-speed Internet flowing north to south through the Grand Canyon State.
But a lack of digital infrastructure in rural communities from edge to edge of Arizona at any moment in time can leave those communities feeling around in the digital dark. Commerce is halted, emergency service lines are dead and for all intents and purposes, whole communities are cut off from the outside world.
