Digital divide: Jill Biden visit touts efforts to connect Alaska Native villages to outside world
For years, when the tiny Alaska Native village of Rampart's awful internet service would go down, the only way to reach the outside world was to await the small airplane that touched down daily with supplies and the occasional visitor. “We had no way of getting ahold of anybody out of Rampart other than going to the airport and telling the pilot,” said tribal administrator Margaret Moses. It's one of scores of Alaska Native villages where spotty and expensive internet coverage is the norm — if it's available at all.