How many stoplights are in your town?

It may be an odd question for many, but for many others living in small towns and rural communities, it’s perfectly normal. Just like “where’d you go to high school”.

For me and my village, the answer is one stoplight. It’s red almost every time I approach the intersection on Main Street thanks to the railroad traffic. It’s only been there since the mid-1990s. How did we survive without them? That’s a rhetorical question.

We all know John Mellencamp’s 1985 megahit “Small Town” (no Cougar back then. I looked it up). It’s loved by millions of city and country folks all over the world. You’re singing it in your head right now, aren’t you? The melody was catchy, the lyrics memorized and if you in fact grew up in a small town, it seemed like John wrote the song about the street you grew up on. He was singing directly to you and your friends. Heck, you could have been Jack and Diane too.

I’m sure city folk would argue, but living in a small town has its advantages, but just like the one stoplight, there are limits to what you can do and how you can do them in the small communities.

For most this was not a problem when information (with a large helping of gossip) was disseminated in local newspapers, schools, barber/beauty shops, diners, bar stools, and church pews.

Today, the need for information and connection in small rural towns and big cities is bigger than ever and the main source for that information and connection is the internet. Commerce, education, and entertainment have moved from offices and classrooms to kitchen tables and offices in bedrooms.

Like most things, the internet is easy to get in the city. Unfortunately, it is a different story in rural communities. Since 2003, Wisper Internet has focused on the small towns and communities of rural America. We care about them because that’s where we live too.

Wisper Founder and CEO Nathan Stooke started this homegrown internet journey because his neighbor two miles away needed internet. Six states and 20,000 customers and two decades later, Wisper is focused on turning its internet towers to the outskirts, suburbs, counties, townships, villages, and unincorporated communities who need reliable internet access more today than ever before.

We often joke about the blessing and the curse of living in a small town. Everyone knows you and everyone knows your business. The pros and cons have and will be debated for generations, and no real answer will ever be agreed on.

As important as the small-town connections of diners, barbers, schools, and churches can be, we need more connections than ever before. We simply cannot function in our daily lives without the internet. And we can no longer say our internet works “most of the time”. Imagine turning on the light switch or faucet and nothing happening.

Just like Mellencamp singing about his Seymour, Indiana roots, there are millions of us who were born in small towns, live in small towns, and will probably die and be buried in the same small towns. Personally, I would not want it any other way. Wisper will never forget where we came from, and we cannot forget the people who love us.

We are small-town…just like you.