Could The Gallatin County Create Better Internet?

Last night, I was watching one of my favorite shows on Netflix, The Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. He covers many different subjects but one of his episodes that started to make me think was the episode called, "Why Your Internet Sucks". (Video below)

He goes on to talk about how there is internet inequality and many people, especially folks in rural/small communities suffer. That's because we only have many two or in many cases one provider to choose from.

Also, if you don't remember, Highspeedinternet.com just did a study and Montana has the second slowest internet in the nation.

Then Hasan Minhaj went on to talk about how some cities/counties are setting up their own internet providers with some of the fastest download speeds in the nation.

That got me thinking, what if Gallatin County, a growing community that has not only a huge rural population created it's own internet company?

They sort of have.

Bozeman Fiber is a three year old company that is a nonprofit and is overseen by community leaders. Their internet speed is faster than anything you can possibly get in the valley and is extremely reliable. That's great right? Yes and no.

This is a great start but if you look at their fiber map they only cater to a very limited area.

Bozeman Fiber hopes to expand into residential areas in 2020 but that's probably delayed.

Many households have multiple people using the internet at the same time and it slows the speed down but if we have faster internet, that problem would be solved.

We need to let our county know we need better internet and Bozeman Fiber should expand and we would probably see an uptick of happier people in our area.

What do you think? Let us know.