BRANCHLAND, W.Va. — Ada Carol Adkins lives together with her two canine in a trailer tucked into the timbers off Higher Mud River Highway.
“I’m comfortable here, but I’m having health issues,” stated the 68-year-old, who retired from her job as a faculty cook dinner a number of years in the past after having a stroke. “Things are failing me.”
Her trailer sits midway up a ridge miles from city and the native well being clinic. Her telephone and web are “wacky sometimes,” she stated. Adkins — who’s fiercely unbiased and calls herself a “Mountain Momma” — worries she gained’t be capable of name for assist if service goes out, which occurs usually.
To Frontier Communications, the telecommunications firm that owns the road to her dwelling, Adkins says: “Please come and hook me right.”
However she is perhaps ready years for higher service, annoyed by her web supplier and left behind by troubled federal grant applications.
1 / 4 of West Virginia counties — together with Lincoln, the place the Mud River bends its means by means of hollows and previous cattle farms — face two boundaries to well being care: They lack high-speed web and have a scarcity of major care suppliers and behavioral well being specialists, in response to a KFF Well being Information evaluation.
Years of Republican and Democratic administrations have tried to repair the nation’s broadband woes, by means of flawed makes an attempt. Dangerous mapping, weak requirements, and flimsy oversight have left Adkins and practically 3 million different rural People in lifeless zones — with eroded well being care companies and the place telehealth doesn’t attain.
Blair Levin, a former govt director of the Federal Communications Fee’s Nationwide Broadband Plan, known as one rural program rollout throughout the first Trump administration “a disaster.”
It was launched earlier than it was prepared, he stated, utilizing unreliable federal maps and a reverse-auction course of to pick web carriers. Areas went to the bottom bidder, however the company failed to make sure winners had the data and assets to construct networks, stated Levin, who’s now an fairness analyst with New Avenue Analysis.
The fund initially introduced awards of $9.2 billion to construct infrastructure in 49 states. By 2025, $3.3 billion of these awards had been in default and, because of this, this system gained’t join 1.9 million properties and companies, in response to a current research.
A $42 billion Biden-era initiative nonetheless could not assist Adkins and plenty of others shortchanged by earlier federal broadband grants. The brand new wave of funding, the Broadband Fairness, Entry, and Deployment Program, or BEAD, has an anti-waste provision and gained’t present service in locations the place earlier grants had been awarded — even when corporations haven’t delivered on their commitments.
The usage of federal cash to get folks related is “really essential” for rural areas, stated Ross DeVol, CEO and chairman of the board of Heartland Ahead, a nonpartisan suppose tank based mostly in Bentonville, Arkansas, that focuses on state and native financial improvement.
“Internet service providers look at the economics of trying to go into some of these communities and there just isn’t enough purchasing power in their minds,” DeVol stated, including that broadband growth is analogous to rural electrification. With out high-speed web, “you’re simply at a distinct disadvantage,” he added. “I’ll call it economic discrimination.”
‘I Got Books Full’
Adkins retains spiral-bound notebooks and calendars crammed with handwritten data of telephone and web outages.
In January, whereas bean soup warmed on the range, she opened a pocket book: “I got books full. Hang on.”
Her finger traced the web page as she recounted outages that occurred about as soon as a month final 12 months. Adkins stated she misplaced connectivity twice in November, once more in October, and in July, Could, and March. Every time she went for days with out service.
Adkins pays Frontier Communications $102.13 a month for a “bundle” that features a connection for her home telephone and wi-fi web entry on her cellphone. Frontier didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Adkins’ and different prospects’ service.
Adkins, a widow, spends most of her time at dwelling and stated she would do video calls together with her medical doctors if she might. She stated she nonetheless has numbness on one facet of her physique after the stroke. She additionally has hypertension and arthritis and makes use of over-the-counter ache patches when wanted, comparable to after she carries 30-pound pet food luggage into the home.
She doesn’t personal a four-wheel-drive truck and, for 3 weeks in January, the snow and ice had been so extreme she couldn’t depart. “I’m stranded up here,” she stated, including that neighbors test in: “‘Do you have electric? Have you got water? Are you OK?’”
The neighbors have all seen Adkins’ line. The pale-yellow wire was tied off with inexperienced plastic ties round a pole outdoors her trailer. Because it ran down the hill, it was knotted round tree trunks and branches, frayed in locations, and, lastly, collapsed on the bottom below gravel, snow, and ice on the backside of the hill.
Adkins stated a deer stepping on the road has interrupted her telephone service.
David and Billi Belcher’s double-wide modular dwelling sits close to the highest of the ridge previous Adkins’ dwelling. Inside, an previous searching canine sleeps on the ground. Belcher identified a window towards the place he stated Frontier’s cable has remained unrepaired for years: “It’s laying on the ground in the woods,” he stated.
Frontier is West Virginia’s legacy service, controlling many of the state’s previous landlines since shopping for them from Verizon Communications in 2010. Twelve years later, the corporate gained practically $248 million to put in high-speed web to West Virginia by means of the Rural Digital Alternative Fund, an initiative launched throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period.
“Big Daddy,” as native transit driver Bruce Perry known as Trump, is standard with the folks of Lincoln County. About 80% of the county’s voters picked the Republican within the final election.
The Trump administration awarded Frontier cash to construct high-speed web to Higher Mud River Highway residents, like Adkins, in response to state mapping. Frontier has till Dec. 31, 2028, to construct.
However the Belchers wanted higher web entry for work and will afford to pay $700 for a Starlink satellite tv for pc web package and insurance coverage, they stated. Their month-to-month Starlink invoice is $120 — a worth many can not handle, particularly since Congress sundown an earlier program that helped offset the price of high-speed plans for shoppers.
In the meantime, the most recent broadband program to attach rural People is ensnared in Trump administration coverage shifts.
The Nationwide Telecommunications and Data Administration, which administers this system, in April introduced a 90-day extension for states to finalize their plans throughout a “comprehensive review” of this system.
West Viriginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, introduced his state would take an extension. The transfer, although, doesn’t make plenty of sense, stated Evan Feinman, who left the company in March after directing the broadband program for the previous three years.
Calling the work already executed in West Virginia an “incredible triumph,” Feinman stated the state had accomplished the planning, mapping, and the preliminary collection of corporations. The plan that was in place would have introduced high-speed fiber traces to properties forward of schedule and below funds, he stated.
“They could be building today, and it’s just deeply disappointing that they’re not,” Feinman stated.
When Feinman resigned in March, he despatched a prolonged electronic mail stating that the brand new administration needs to take fiber away from properties and companies and substitute it with satellite tv for pc connections. The transfer, he stated, can be dearer for shoppers and harm rural and small-town America.
Morrisey, whose workplace declined to reply to requests for remark, stated in his announcement that he needs to make sure West Virginia spends the cash in a fashion “consistent with program changes being proposed by the Trump Administration” and “evaluate a broader range of technology options.”
Commissioners from Grant County responded with a letter supporting fiber-optic cables somewhat than satellite-based connections like these offered by Elon Musk’s Starlink. Nationwide, 115 lawmakers from 28 states despatched a letter to federal leaders stating that adjustments might “delay broadband deployment by a year or more.”
For Adkins and others, the wait has been lengthy sufficient.
Whereas legislators in Washington and throughout the nation bickered over the broadband program, Adkins went with out telephone and web. By late March, she stated, her 42-year-old son was more and more apprehensive, noting “you’re getting up in age.” He informed her: “Mom, move out, get off of that hill.”
Worst-Case State of affairs
A couple of miles from Higher Mud River Highway, previous the McDonald’s and throughout the highway from the native library, Brian Vance sat in his downtown Hamlin, West Virginia, workplace. He stated his firm has been making an attempt to “build up there for a while.”
Vance is a normal supervisor for Armstrong Phone and Cable, a regional telecommunications supplier that competes with Frontier. He grew up locally, and fogeys of a highschool pal stay off Higher Mud River. However he stated “it’s very difficult” to construct fiber alongside the rocky terrain to properties the place “you are hoping that people will hook up, and if they don’t, well, you’ve lost a lot of money.”
A 2022 countywide broadband evaluation discovered that stringing fiber-optic traces alongside phone poles would value greater than $5,000 per connection in some areas — work that would wish large federal subsidies to be possible.
But Vance stated Armstrong can not apply for the most recent BEAD funding to assist finance connections. And whereas he likes that the federal authorities is “being responsible” by not handing out two federal grants for a similar space, Vance stated, “we want to see people deliver on the grants they have.”
If Frontier hadn’t already gotten federal funds from the sooner Trump program, “we definitely would have applied to that area,” Vance stated.
The 2022 evaluation famous the neighborhood’s financial system wouldn’t be sustainable with out “ubiquitous broadband.”
Excessive-speed web brings extra jobs and fewer poverty, stated Claudia Persico, an affiliate professor at American College. Persico, who can be a analysis affiliate with the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis, co-authored a current paper that discovered elevated broadband web results in a discount within the variety of suicides in addition to enhancements in self-reported psychological and bodily well being.
Greater than 30% of Lincoln County’s inhabitants stories circumstances of despair, in response to information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. The speed of opioid prescriptions distributed in Lincoln County is down about 60% from 2014 to 2024 — however nonetheless larger than the state common, in response to the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy.
Twenty p.c of the county’s inhabitants lives under the poverty line, and residents are additionally extra doubtless than the nationwide common to expertise coronary heart illness, diabetes, and weight problems.
Lincoln Main Care Heart presents telehealth companies comparable to digital medical data on a affected person portal and a pharmacy app, stated Jill Adkins, chief high quality and threat officer at Southern West Virginia Well being System, which operates the clinic.
However due to restricted entry, solely about 7% of sufferers use telehealth, she stated.
Della Vance was a affected person on the clinic however stated she has by no means used a affected person portal. If she might, Vance stated, she would test data on the infant she is anticipating.
“You can’t really get on if you don’t have good service and no internet,” she stated. “It makes me angry, honestly.”
Vance and her husband, Isaiah, stay off a gravel highway that veers from Higher Mud River. There’s a tall pole with black wires dangling throughout the highway from their small dwelling. Pointing to the cables, Isaiah Vance stated he couldn’t get telephone service anymore.
Verizon introduced plans final 12 months to purchase Frontier for an estimated $20 billion. The deal, which should be accepted by federal and state regulators, is anticipated to be accomplished in early 2026, in response to an investor’s press launch.
In its federal merger utility, Frontier acknowledged that it had taken on an excessive amount of debt after rising from chapter and that debt would make it troublesome to complete the work of putting in fiber to prospects in 25 states.
In West Virginia, Frontier’s Allison Ellis wrote in March 3 testimony, searching for approval for the merger from state regulators, that Verizon will honor the agricultural program commitments. The earlier month, in February, Frontier filed a movement with the state public service fee to maintain the variety of prospects utilizing copper traces and the sooner fiber-optic traces confidential.
Kelly Workman, West Virginia’s broadband director, stated throughout a November interview that her workplace has requested federal regulators for “greater visibility” into Frontier’s rural program building, significantly as a result of these places can not win the Biden-era infrastructure cash when it is out there.
“The worst-case scenario would be for any of these locations to be left behind,” Workman stated.
‘Money Cow’
Frontier’s progress putting in fiber-optic traces and its unreliable service have annoyed West Virginians for years. In a 2020 letter to the FCC, U.S. Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) cited “the failure of Frontier to deliver on promises to federal partners” and its “mismanagement” of federal {dollars}, which compelled the state to pay again $4.7 million due to improper use and missed deadlines.
Michael Holstine, a longtime member of the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council, stated the corporate has “just used West Virginia as a money cow.” Holstine has been combating for the development of fiber-optic traces in Pocahontas County for years. “I really just hope I get it before I die.”
Throughout the state, folks like Holstine and Adkins are anticipating up to date networks, in response to interviews in addition to letters launched below a public data request.
Chrissy Murray, vice chairman of Frontier’s exterior communications, acknowledged that the corporate was “building back our community efforts” in West Virginia after a chapter submitting and reorganization. She stated there was a “notable decline” in client complaints, although she didn’t present particular numbers.
Murray stated Frontier constructed fiber-optic cables to twenty% of its designated rural funds places as of the tip of 2024. It has additionally invested in different infrastructure initiatives throughout the state, she stated in a January electronic mail, including that the corporate donated high-speed fiber web to West Virginia College’s rural Jackson’s Mill campus.
In line with information tracked by a federal company, Frontier has related 6,100 — or fewer than 10% — of the greater than 79,000 places it was awarded within the Rural Digital Alternative Fund program.
The FCC oversees the agricultural fund. The company didn’t reply to a request for remark. Frontier expects to obtain $37 million yearly from the company by means of 2032, in response to a federal submitting.
In April, a new batch of letters from West Virginia residents filed as “support” for Frontier’s merger with Verizon appeared within the state regulatory docket:
“My support for this case depends on whether Verizon plans to upgrade or replace the existing Frontier infrastructure,” wrote one buyer in Summers County, within the far southern nook of the state, including, “West Virginians in my neck of the woods have been held hostage by Frontier for a generation now because no other providers exist.”
A buyer from Hardy County, within the state’s northeastern nook, wrote: “This is [a] move by frontier to to [sic] escape its responsibility to continue services.”
‘Deep-Rooted’
Adkins moved to Higher Mud River together with her husband, Bobby, many years in the past.
For years, Bobby and Ada Carol Adkins ran a “carry-out” on Higher Mud River Highway. The previous constructing continues to be on the rock quarry simply down the hill and across the curve from the place her trailer sits.
It was the kind of retailer the place locals stored a tab — which Bobby handled an excessive amount of like a “charity,” Adkins stated. They offered cigarettes, beer, bread, luggage of chips, and a few meals objects like potatoes and rice. “Whatever the community would want,” she stated.
Then, Bobby Adkins’ “health started deteriorating and money got tighter,” Adkins stated. He died at 62 years previous.
Now, Adkins stated, “I’m having kidney problems. I got arthritis, they’re treating me for high blood pressure.”
Her physician has begun sending notes over the web to refill her blood strain drugs and, Adkins stated, “I love that!”
However Adkins’ web was out once more in early April, and she will be able to’t afford Starlink like her neighbors. Whilst Adkins stated she is “deep-rooted,” her son’s request is on her thoughts.
“I’m having health problems,” Adkins stated. “He makes a lot of sense.”
