As West Virginia waits to receive hundreds of millions of federal broadband dollars, many residents are still struggling with slow speeds, spotty service and high bills.
State broadband officials say the state is on track to deliver universal high-speed internet with more than $500 million in federal funding to connect more than 70,000 homes and businesses.
About 80% of households are served by minimum broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second upload speeds, according to federal mapping data.
But as residents wait for broadband rollouts and the promise of high-speed internet to reach their homes, many are still using outdated and unreliable service.
Here are some of their stories.
‘It’s hit and miss’
Nick Lennox, who lives in Elkins, said his cable internet service is inconsistent enough that he plans around it.
“I do have internet where I live,” he said. “It’s hit and miss.”
Lennox, who is self-employed as a consultant, moved to West Virginia in late 2023 from Tennessee through the Ascend WV program, which pays remote workers to move to the state.
At the time, he moved to Montrose, which is about a 15-minute drive from Elkins. Satellite internet was his only option. The service limited high-speed use to certain hours during the day and slowed dramatically once those caps were exceeded.
“I had to pay a lot of money for anything that was a decent speed,” he said.
He’s since moved to Elkins and has become very active in city politics. But now even on clear days, he said his connection can be unreliable unless he’s plugged directly into an ethernet port.
On days when his service drops, which Lennox said can happen even on clear days, he often relies on his phone’s hotspot or drives into town to find a stronger connection, either at a local coffee shop or coworking space, joining others.
“No one’s bragging about how good their internet is,” he said. “I’ve gotten accustomed to very average service.”
‘I don’t really have a choice’
In urban Morgantown, for residents like Courtney Ostaff, having a stable internet connection is a lifeline.
She’s taught math and science classes for over a decade at an online school, Well-Trained Mind Academy. And for years, she struggled with expensive internet bills and spotty coverage using outdated cable internet.
She pays about $100 a month for her service.
“I don’t really have a choice, because it’s that, or it’s DSL, which breaks down all the time, and it’s not nearly fast enough,” she said.
DSL utilizes existing copper telephone lines to deliver internet.
And when the power goes out, which happens at least once a month for her, Ostaff said both her internet and cell service are knocked out, which is why she keeps a landline just to call the power company.
Without reliable internet, she said, she wouldn’t be able to work at all.
“If I didn’t have any connection, I couldn’t do this job,” she said. “I wouldn’t have this job.”
Having internet access affects nearly every part of Ostaff’s household. Her two children rely on it for school and online therapy appointments.
Her elderly mother, who lives with the family and is largely housebound, uses it for telehealth visits and to manage medical care. And all of these services require a strong internet connection.
“If you don’t have that, it makes things a lot more challenging,” she said.
‘We’re still on copper’
Allen Johnson lives in rural Pocahontas County, about 15 miles away from Cass and Green Bank, having moved from Wayne County nearly 50 years ago.
Johnson has relied on DSL internet service for years, an infrastructure he said goes back decades. Although he’s mostly retired, he still works with nonprofits in communications and sits on a few of their boards.
“The problem is we’re still on copper,” he said.
At one point, he said his upload speeds dipped below one megabit per second, making basic tasks like streaming movies, uploading large files or answering video calls difficult.
“If I have a big file to upload, I just wait until I drive to the library or somewhere I can do that,” he said.
Johnson said he pays as much as $140 a month for his internet service, despite the slow speeds and lack of alternatives, living in the heart of the Quiet Zone. Cell service is also unreliable, he said, which is why he keeps a landline.
Faster fiber internet has been promised for years, but construction has repeatedly stalled near his home. But for Johnson, those delays have become harder to accept.
Despite repeated announcements from the company, grant announcements and new maps, he said, reliable high-speed internet has yet to reach his home.
“When they decided to put a person on the moon within a decade, they did that,” he said. “But we can’t get fast internet here in much of the county.”