Some of our older readers might remember the days when cities had electricity, but many rural areas did not.
From our perspective years later, that inequity may seem unimaginable or even unfair. But in the 1920s, it did not appear to be economically feasible to wire the nation and give every American the opportunity to flip a switch and see the lights come on.
With less dense populations, power companies feared the initial infrastructure costs would never be recouped. It took public investment and the cooperatives that evolved from the Rural Electrification Act of 1935 to really change the situation and help rural Americans join the economic boom of the 20th Century.
The situation with today's broadband divide is very similar and just as critical.
West Virginia and many rural areas of the country have inadequate access to high-speed Internet services, and in many cases, the service we do have is slower by far than that available in booming areas.
The 2015 broadband progress report from the Federal Communications Commission shows that nationally about 17 percent of the population lacks access to advanced broadband (benchmarked as 25 megabits per second downstream and 3 Mbps upstream). But in rural America and West Virginia, about half of the population lacks that access.
Having that cutting-edge connectivity opens new worlds of opportunity, and not having it puts our region at a huge disadvantage when it comes to business growth, health services, education and research.
But as with the power companies of the 1930s, Internet providers will need some "encouragement" to expand and improve access in rural areas, where the scattered and less affluent population might not provide the payback they typically expect.
Once again, public-private partnerships will be critical to making something happen. For example, the Pine Telephone Company in Oklahoma is completing a $56 million expansion of affordable mobile and fiber optic broadband service to residents in the southeastern part of the state. Key funding came from grants and loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development.
West Virginia's U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has made broadband expansion a top priority for her office and began a series of meetings on the topic last week in Fairmont. Her plan to promote the benefits to the public and nurture collaboration between government and the private sector will be steps in the right direction. On another front, Huntington is competing in a national competition with other cities to "win" a multimillion broadband investment from Frontier Communications.
It will probably take all those ideas and more. But our region needs to push to build our communications infrastructure or risk falling further behind.