Almost Heaven, no reception

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here – “Almost Heaven, no reception”

Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)
Release Date: October 7, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores America’s persistent digital divide through the lens of Obie Riley, a rural Mississippi farmer, mechanic, and district supervisor. Riley’s years-long fight for internet access in Philadelphia, Mississippi, illustrates broader challenges—how rural and marginalized communities are left behind as connectivity becomes increasingly essential. The story links historic struggles for infrastructure, from electricity to broadband, and examines how political shifts and tech policy reversals impact millions. Insights from experts—including the Brookings Institution and National Digital Inclusion Alliance—reveal what’s at stake as the U.S. decides whether internet is a privilege or a right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life in Rural Mississippi Without Broadband

• Rural Contrast: Philadelphia, MS is very different from its northern namesake—slower pace, agricultural focus, but plagued by poor internet.
  • “We do things really, really slow.” —Obie Riley [00:39]
• Personal Impact: As a farmer and mechanic, Obie can’t reliably access manuals or cloud services essential to his business.
  • “You can pump all of the television that 100 people couldn't watch, but they can't pump any Internet. And I don't understand that.” —Obie Riley [01:30]

2. Community and Political Apathy Toward Connectivity

• Some local leaders and constituents didn’t see high-speed internet as a priority, focusing instead on basics like roads and water.
  • “They really didn't care about what was going on in New York City...they were perfectly fine with that. That's a separish way of thinking.” —Obie Riley [05:10]
• Obie’s Vision: He argued digital access would bring job opportunities and economic growth, but struggled to persuade others.
  • “There's a ton of work at home, jobs…you can sit right here in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on Neshoba county and have a job that pays you, you know, 60,000 to six figures.” —Obie Riley [06:29]

3. The Economic and Logistical Challenges

• Rural broadband buildouts cost approximately 80% more than in urban areas due to distance and population density.
  • “Getting fiber optic cables into rural areas is notoriously expensive…fewer people and they're further apart, which means more cables and more digging…” —Dina Temple-Raston [06:59]

4. A Defining Crisis: The Pandemic

• COVID-19 exposed the stark digital divide: students and workers forced to use public Wi-Fi in library parking lots.
  • “Kids came together to do homework under streetlights…” —Dina Temple-Raston [09:13]
• Broader Impact: It became clear that internet was not a luxury but a necessity for education, healthcare, and work.

5. Historical Parallel: Rural Electrification

• The episode draws strong parallels to the 1930s, when government intervention brought electricity to rural America:
  • “In 1936, the government stepped in…Thus was created the Rural Electrification Administration…” —Dina Temple-Raston [11:00]
• Experts argue a similar federal effort is needed for broadband.
  • “We need the government in many respects to sort of help us to shepherd in universal connectivity as we once did with telephone service.” —Nicole Turner Lee [12:18]

6. Policy, Politics, and Digital Redlining

• Two-Party Approaches: Attempts at universal broadband have been inconsistent, swinging between infrastructure and programming based on political party in power.
  • “We have this ping pong that we play when it comes to getting people connected…” —Nicole Turner Lee [12:39]
• Digital Redlining: Telecom companies invest only where profitable, leaving marginalized communities behind.
  • “Companies could pick and choose where they wanted to build.…we've had a history of discrimination, particularly when it comes to black Americans.” —Nicole Turner Lee [13:29]

7. The Federal Response – Then Political Reversal

• The Biden-Harris administration pushed the largest federal investment yet in broadband infrastructure and digital literacy.
  • “We had not seen the type of monetary investment in both infrastructure as well as digital literacy and training…” —Nicole Turner Lee [14:42]
• Policy reversals soon followed (notably under President Trump), with digital equity grants being canceled and fiber no longer prioritized.
  • “President Trump called the Digital Equity act woke handouts based on race.” —Dina Temple-Raston [15:35]
  • “The money was gone. So were some of her staffers.” —Dina Temple-Raston [16:10]

8. Tech Neutrality & The Rise of Satellite Internet

• New funding criteria only consider lowest cost technology, deprioritizing fiber in favor of satellite (notably Starlink by Elon Musk).
  • “Technologically agnostic…produce the right access at the lowest price.” —Howard Lutnick (summarized) [16:23]
• Experts fear this “two-tier” system will help companies like Starlink, while low-income households can’t afford installation or service.
  • “Does a working mom…have 600 bucks that they could spend to get this thing? No, I would say not.” —Obie Riley [18:26]

9. What's at Stake

• With AI, telehealth, and democratic participation increasingly rooted online, those without adequate internet face growing disenfranchisement.
  • “The Internet isn't a utility, it's a gateway to the future. And once again, America has to decide who gets through.” —Dina Temple-Raston [19:38]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It's beautiful here. We're very southern and we are very rural here. And we do things really, really slow.” —Obie Riley [00:39]
• “You can pump all of the television that 100 people couldn't watch, but they can't pump any Internet. And I don't understand that. That's the same stuff.” —Obie Riley [01:30]
• “I had a whole plan on how, how to monetize it, which really is… the tricky part of all of this.” —Obie Riley [06:54]
• “At no point did that become more clear than in the spring of 2020. Schools, businesses, grocery shopping, the entire world moved online. Or at least those who could did.” —Dina Temple-Raston [08:17]
• “We need the government in many respects to sort of help us to shepherd in universal connectivity as we once did with telephone service.” —Nicole Turner Lee [12:18]
• “The Internet isn't a utility, it's a gateway to the future. And once again, America has to decide who gets through.” —Dina Temple-Raston [19:38]

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Important Timestamps

• [00:39] — Obie Riley describes rural life and connectivity issues
• [05:10] — Community apathy toward internet as priority
• [06:29] — The economic case for broadband
• [09:13] — Students forced to do homework in library parking lots during the pandemic
• [11:00] — History of rural electrification as parallel to broadband
• [12:39] — Nicole Turner Lee on policy “ping pong”
• [13:29] — Introduction of the term “digital redlining”
• [14:42] — New federal investments in broadband
• [15:35] — Politicization and reversal of digital equity grants
• [16:23] — Shift to tech neutrality and satellite preference
• [18:26] — Affordability barriers to satellite internet in rural America
• [19:38] — Concluding reflection: internet as gateway to the future

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Closing Thoughts

This episode compellingly details the real-life impact of America’s uneven internet rollout, using vivid storytelling and first-hand testimony. By weaving history, policy, and personal stakes, it challenges listeners to reconsider whether universal broadband is merely a technological upgrade or a matter of social and economic justice. The stakes are rising, the divide is deepening, and the outcome will shape who participates in the digital future.

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Transcript

[Dina Temple Rouston]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here. Philadelphia, Mississippi isn't anything like its city cousin up north. In fact, in many ways, it's just the opposite. No traffic jams or Philly cheesesteaks. More like live cows, rolling hills, and the sweet and sour smell of southern pine.

[Obie Riley]

It's beautiful here. We're very southern and we are very rural here. And we do things really, really slow.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

That's Obie Riley, farmer, auto mechanic and a district supervisor for Neshoba County. And in this southern Philadelphia, while the scenery is abundant, the connectivity, not so much.

[Obie Riley]

When you pass a mile outside the city limits, the connectivity out there is terrible. It actually affected my business.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Obi has an auto shop and to fix a car you need manuals, but he can't download him. And out on the farm, a lot of the equipment won't sync with the cloud. Which is weird because it's not like Philadelphia doesn't embrace other kinds of technology.

[Obie Riley]

Direct TV and the Dish TV, they probably cover 70, 80% of the households in the rural areas. Right? You can pump all of the television that 100 people couldn't watch, but they can't pump any Internet. And I don't understand that. That's the same stuff.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Back in 2007, Obi decided to do something about it. He ran for office on three campaign better roads, a new hospital, and super reliable Internet.

[Obie Riley]

We were able to get a new hospital, roads have improved, and then how.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Did Internet turn out? I'm Dena Temple Rouston, and this is Click Here. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And today, the story of Obie Riley and what his struggle tells us about America's long, uneven march toward the future. Because the fight over Internet access isn't just about WI fi. It's about who gets included and who gets left behind.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

It's pretty much like a soap opera. It always starts one way, it ends another way, and we just probably need to break that pattern.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Stay with us.

[Narrator/Announcer]

This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need to check out odoo-oo.com that's O D O O.com support comes from Dakota State University what happens when you unite dynamic minds with one revolutionary vision? A rising force on the cutting edge of everything from a little university on the prairie to a cyber powerhouse of the plains. We are proving the nation's best cyber can come from where you least expect it. Now we're molding the future of cyber AI and quantum computing one graduate at a time. See what Dakota State University is building [e-mail].

[Dina Temple Rouston]

For recorded future news, this is Click here. I'm Dina Temple Rousten. Obie's frustration with bad connections started long before he settled in Mississippi.

[Obie Riley]

22 years I spent in the United States Coast Guard.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

He figured he'd join the most high tech military in the world until he sat down to start logging flights.

[Obie Riley]

And I would log the personnel that was on the flight, the position that they flew, and how much time the flight was.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

And he'd do that for 20 flights.

[Obie Riley]

A day, which is not a lot of data, but the computer would just freeze and I would type in two letters and it would just like, it would just like get full and just stop drinking.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Bosses thought he was stalling, but it wasn't him. It was the bad tech. It was his first clue on how important good Internet would be to a good career.

[Obie Riley]

So that's what I was trying to work ahead of when I got back to Mississippi.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

When he ran for office, he made high speed Internet a priority. But he got a surprising response.

[Obie Riley]

I had some that served with me on the board that said, you know what my constituents said? They like it the way it is. They really didn't care about what was going on in New York City. As long as they could go to the co op and get feed for the cows and they had water to drink, they were, they were perfectly fine with that. That's a separish way of thinking.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

But he knew what doors connectivity could open for them. So he ignored their apathy and called up some of his old Coast Guard buddies, the ones who managed to wire entire bases in the Iraqi desert. He figured if they could do it there, how hard could it be to do it in Mississippi?

[Obie Riley]

They started to talk about microwave and how they set up entire grids over areas that was as large as the, as the county, and they done it in just a few months.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Microwave doesn't require phone lines, satellite or cables. It's not always as reliable as fiber optic, but better than nothing. Hobie worked up a business plan and he started sharing it. But as he lobbied locals, some people told him, look, we're worried about Putting food on our table, high speed Internet, that's a luxury. But he argued, no, actually that'll help you afford food and a lot more.

[Obie Riley]

There's a ton of work at home, jobs that if you got good connectivity and the scale set that these companies are looking for, you can sit right here in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on Neshoba county and have a job that pays you, you know, 60,000 to six figures.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

And when he took it round to companies and politicians, he had an argument for them too.

[Obie Riley]

I had a whole plan on how, how to monetize it, which really is.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The tricky part of all of this. Getting fiber optic cables into rural areas is notoriously expensive. The initial construction costs can be 80% more expensive than in a big city because, well, there are fewer people and they're further apart, which means more cables and more digging to connect each home. But Obi did the math, and he figured if the telecom company and the local government paid for the construction, the subscribers could do the rest by paying the local Internet provider about $100 a month.

[Obie Riley]

And that would have been more than enough to service the debt. And not only that, but there's so much advertising dollars that goes over the Internet, and it would probably be bringing the county some residual funds in. It wasn't a fact of can we afford it? It's the fact that how could you not afford it? Right?

[Dina Temple Rouston]

How could you, how could you not make it a priority?

[Obie Riley]

Yeah. Yes, ma'.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Am.

[Obie Riley]

We can help our, our community and we can be the poster child for all the other rural and poor communities, right?

[Dina Temple Rouston]

But that somehow didn't win the day.

[Obie Riley]

Deaf ears. But without that Internet, that's a whole segment of people that's just being overlooked.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

At no point did that become more clear than in the spring of 2020. Schools, businesses, grocery shopping, the entire world moved online. Or at least those who could did.

[Narrator/Announcer]

A whopping 16.9 million children under the age of 18 lack high speed Internet.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

At home, a problem that has hit.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Rural students in our country especially hard.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Marie and Juanita technically have the Internet.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

But many times their connection lacks or.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Flat out fails to.

[Angela Seifer]

Yesterday, I didn't enter our class. Neither did the teacher because she didn't have Internet connection.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

With limited Internet access at home, people in Philadelphia, Mississippi gathered in the one spot in town with consistent connection, the parking lot at the local library, Especially.

[Obie Riley]

Our junior college kids and high school kids, all type of weather, because that was one of the places that had Internet.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Kids came together to do homework under streetlights, work on college applications, write resumes, and the pandemic made clear Internet access really wasn't about streaming Netflix. It was suddenly the difference between school or no school, telehealth or getting sick, remote work or no work. It took a global pandemic, but finally the need for universal Internet access became impossible to deny. The thing is, this isn't the first time a crisis inspired America to get connected. That's when we come back. Stay with us.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster. The sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's on the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass that's on the media specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

It is called Internet. I use the World Wide Web information superhighway. Cyber security. Why do things go viral? Click here. Obi and people like him have been arguing for decades that high speed Internet isn't a luxury for the lucky. Access should be universal, the way electricity and telephones are back in the day. It took a different set of farmers nearly 100 years ago to make electricity and telephones universal.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Can't we ever have electricity?

[Dina Temple Rouston]

In the 1930s, most of urban America had power. But down on the farm, fewer than 1 in 10 did. American farms face disaster. Electricity could be a big step in saving these farms. The country was in the Great Depression. Money was scarce and the arguments sounded familiar. Rural people argued without electricity were left behind, and companies said it was too expensive to provide. And it's moments like these where there's often a baton handoff between private enterprise and government support, helping companies help citizens in ways that otherwise wouldn't be profitable. And that's exactly what happened. In 1936, the government stepped in. A rural electrification program was signed by President Roosevelt. Thus was created the Rural Electrification Administration, commonly known as rea. It provided loans to build electrical infrastructure in rural areas. FDR touted it as both a boost to quality of life and an investment in the economy. And by 1950, rural America was well lit. Electricity wasn't just a convenience. It turns out it was survival.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

We need the government in many respects to sort of help us to shepherd in universal connectivity as we once did with telephone service.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

This is Nicole Turner Lee of the Brookings Institution, and she says unlike the New Deal, broadband has been handled in fits and starts.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

We have this ping pong that we play when it comes to getting people connected to the Internet. Democratic Administrations give more money towards programming, but, you know, on the other side, we see Republican administrations pay more attention to infrastructure.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The result? The Internet isn't treated like a public utility. So companies build where profit is easy and ignore everywhere else. Which could explain why, according to the Benton Institute for Broadband in Society, about a third of rural Americans don't have a home broadband subscription.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

And when you add on demographic characteristics, black Latinas, disabled, older Americans, the numbers just get increasingly larger with regards to who's not connected.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

And there's a name for this. Digital redlining.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

Digital redlining was sort of based on the premise, much like housing redlining, that companies were essentially building in spaces where there was a return on investment. Companies could pick and choose where they wanted to build. And as a result, we've had a history of discrimination, particularly when it comes to black Americans.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

And then came the pandemic when suddenly the problem became so stark, a sort of New Deal type urgency finally kicked in.

[Obie Riley]

We're back now with a push from.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The White House to give every American home access to high speed Internet.

[Obie Riley]

The White House says providing high speed Internet is a necessity in today's society.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

With bipartisan support, the government set aside billions to expand broadband across the country. That meant rolling out fiber to the last mile. Even places like Philadelphia, Mississippi, they'd also earmarked an additional $3 billion with a B to teach people how to use the web safely. And even more money was set aside to help people pay their Internet bills. Nicole has been working on this issue for decades now, decades of promises made and broken. But she says this felt different.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

During the Biden Harris administration, we saw the introduction of some of the largest amounts of resources committed to this issue. I mean, in my lifetime of doing this, of 30 plus years, we had not seen the type of monetary investment in both infrastructure as well as digital literacy and training. Then under the Biden Harris administration, it was bipartisan, actually.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Democrats and Republicans worked together on the bill. But then just a few years later, somehow technology, just zeros and ones, got caught in the culture wars.

[Angela Seifer]

They've canceled it. I got a termination notice.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Angela Seifer is director of the National Digital Inclusion alliance. And she thought she had $25 million in a digital equity grant to help get rural Americans online.

[Angela Seifer]

We thought we were getting this grant. So then you make plans around it, of course.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

But then President Trump called the Digital Equity act woke handouts based on race. So where were you when you found out that your grant has been canceled?

[Angela Seifer]

I was at a tech group meeting for my local school district And I get a text from somebody in D.C. saying, Did you see the post?

[Dina Temple Rouston]

And Angela said, what post?

[Angela Seifer]

And I didn't know what she was talking about. So I leave right away and call her and find out this terrible news. And then I went back to the group and I used some curse words and I left right away.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The money was gone. So were some of her staffers. And that wasn't all. In June, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick rewrote the rules. He said fiber optic cable was no longer a priority.

[Obie Riley]

If your state is willing to just be technologically agnostic, meaning produce the right.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Access at the lowest price. Technologically agnostic, or as Lutnick put it, tech neutral. It sounds fair, but Nicole from Brookings says it isn't actually that neutral.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

What's so interesting about today is that the push towards neutrality and technology has very little to do with meeting people where they're at. It's really trying to prefer that there is a technology called satellite that has the potential to solve the digital divide.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Satellites might work for individual households, but Nicole says the jury's still out whether it can sustain entire towns the same way fiber can. And satellites weren't the only change the commerce secretary introduced until now. When Internet providers applied for federal funding, the government weighed a whole list of factors, like whether their plans were affordable. But now the only thing that seems to matter is who is asking for the least amount of federal money Equity. Affordable bills no longer count for much. In fact, providers once had to offer at least one plan a middle class household could afford, and that rule has been scrapped. Experts worry the result will be a two tier system satellite for those who can afford it and nothing for those who can't. And affording satellite? Obie Riley in Mississippi knows something about that. When he couldn't get fiber into his area and his Verizon plan wasn't working, he shelled out $1,500 to set up a Starlink connection.

[Obie Riley]

There's one for home, one for the.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Farm, and he pays another $120 a month for the subscription. At this point, it's his only option. But it's not an option many people in Philadelphia, Mississippi can afford.

[Obie Riley]

Does a working mom that's working to put food on the table with one or two or five kids have 600 bucks that they could spend to get this thing? No, I would say not.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

So why the big change? Maybe it's because the administration believes satellite Internet is truly superior to fiber. Or Nicole worries, maybe it's something else. Leaning into satellites seems to benefit one company in particular, Elon Musk's Starlink. The rule change means states that spent years planning for fiber optic projects are now scrambling, and Starlink, already in orbit, is first in line. Each generation the same pattern. Electricity phones, now broadband. Do we build for everyone, or just for those who can pay? This time the stakes are higher because as AI, telehealth, remote work, even democracy itself move online, the cost of being left behind only grows. The Internet isn't a utility, it's a gateway to the future. And once again, America has to decide who gets through. This is Click here.

[Cyber Daily Host]

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity or right in your inbox.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Here are some of the tech stories making news this week. It's Tuesday, October 7th.

[Obie Riley]

At midnight, the US government faces a shutdown, and with it, a major blow to cybersecurity.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The government shutdown hit America's cyber defense at a weak point. The agency charged with protecting the nation's critical infrastructure, CISA, has furloughed 65% of its workforce. This comes after it had already lost a third of its staff earlier in the year. What's more, the shutdown froze the reauthorization of CISA 2015, a law shielding companies from legal risk when sharing information with the government about cyber attacks. Now that SHIELD is gone and companies are being told to hold back, which means less data shared and fewer resources available. At the very moment attacks are growing in sophistication, the governor says lawmakers had.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

To act to head off potential disaster.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The state of California just passed the nation's first AI safety law. It requires big AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to publish their security protocols and be more transparent. In the words of the new law, companies have to report incidents related to crimes committed without human oversight, and they need to share how they keep their tools from being weaponized in cyber attacks. It goes further than Europe's AI act and includes whistleblower protections. Rather predictably, Silicon Valley leaders aren't thrilled. And at the federal level, Senator Ted Cruz has said he wants to block states from regulating AI altogether. What's clear is that the fight over who gets to police AI is only beginning.

[Angela Seifer]

And finally, hi, my name is Tilly Norwood.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Meet Hollywood's newest starlet. She's on social media. She's getting offers. But there's a catch. She isn't real. Tilly is a fully AI generated actor from a London studio, and her creator calls her the next Scarlett Johansson. She hasn't filmed a single scene yet, but her human competition is not amused. Just ask the real Emily Blunt. Good Lord, we're screwed. That is really, really scary.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Come on.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

Agencies don't do that. Actors unions warn Tilly and her kind threaten real jobs. Studios. They claim she's just art, not a replacement. Though in one way, Tilly may be the most Hollywood thing of all, a creation that started out with nothing but light and longing.

[Zach Hirsch]

Click Here is Dina Temple Rasten, Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda and me, Zach Hirsch. I was the lead producer on this episode. The story was edited by Karen Duffin and fact checked by Darren Ancrum. It contains original music by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Jesse Niswonger and Jake Cook are our sound designers and engineers. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Join us Friday as we continue our conversation about connectivity with Mahesh Krishnaswamy, who's building an Internet in the sky on beams of light.

[Dina Temple Rouston]

The laser beams are the size of a chopstick and they are pointing at.

[Obie Riley]

Literally a grain of rice at several kilometers away.

[Zach Hirsch]

That's Friday on Click Here. We'll see you then.

[Cyber Daily Host]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here, Then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.