Rural businesses see high costs, slow internet speeds

Gary Smith has worked at the grain elevator at Okaw Farmer’s Co-op in Lovington, Illinois, for 40 years. On his desk sit two computer screens, where he tracks corn and soybean prices online at the Chicago Board of Trade. As he explained, trade moves fast: “Just bam bam bam, and within a few seconds it could change a nickel or a dime against your favor.”A slow internet connection could mean a loss of hundreds of dollars for a farmer trying to sell his crop. Smith said their internet connection used to be so slow, they’d often just pick up the phone to report the grades and weights of grain they were buying. “Well, you know how a telephone conversation can go,” he said while watching the prices change on the screen. “Well that was just a half-cent now we would have lost on soybeans just by this little conversation right here.”That changed when they got high-speed internet over fiber optic cables a year ago.“Speed is what we’re after, and fiber optic is a lot better,” he said.But fiber or many other high-speed internet options are expensive to bring to rural towns like Lovington, with a population of about 1,100.