Broadband dead spots aren't just in rural areas

Beech Creek Gardens is a pocket of nature on the outskirts of Alliance (OH), bordered by a highway, farms and houses. Just don't expect high-speed Internet service.

More than 98 percent of Stark County's 151,000 households have access to land-based broadband Internet, but the nature preserve and its neighbors on Beech Street NE sit in a dead spot, according to the latest data from Connect Ohio, a not-for-profit group that tracks web access. That means being forced to use a slow, satellite-based service. "If we have more than three people online at once, it actually slows everyone down," said associate director Melinda Carmichael. "A fourth or fifth person might bump them completely off." Land-based broadband gaps tend to occur along the county's more rural southern edge, but pockets pop up even inside Canton (OH)'s city limits.