In 2026, reliable and fast internet is almost as important to daily life as electricity and water. It’s how we shop, entertain ourselves, work, access healthcare and do so much more.
Any community without it is doomed to struggle to attract new residents or keep the ones it has.
That’s the , population about 3,500 in East Carroll Parish, finds itself in.
For years, town residents have wanted good internet service. A local activist group, Delta Interfaith, had made the call a central part of its platform. And within the last couple of years, it seemed as if they might have finally gotten their wish.
A Missouri-based company called Conexon had agreed to lay fiber throughout East Carroll Parish, including in Lake Providence, paid for in part by federal and state grants. As of just a few months ago, much of that work had been completed: Fiber had been installed right up to the edge of town.
But then it stopped. Multiple reasons, including a Trump administration rewrite of program rules and a fight between Conexon and Louisiana’s broadband office, were to blame.
Months later, residents are still waiting.
“We’re furious,” a local organizer from Lake Providence told this newspaper’s Jenna Ross. “We’re fed up.”
So are we.
The first signs of trouble came after the Trump administration made changes to the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD, program. It was created under the Biden administration's bipartisan infrastructure law to speed the rollout of broadband to rural areas. But critics argued the program was moving too slowly.
The Trump administration vowed to change that by shifting its focus away from installing cheaper, more reliable and faster fiber internet and instead allowing satellite internet companies, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which operates Starlink, to get the grants. But satellite is already available in East Carroll.
Compounding the federal change is an ongoing dispute between Conexon CEO Jonathan Chambers and the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity. Chambers contends that the state office owes his company millions of dollars for work already completed. Veneeth Iyengar, the lead state official, says the company still must comply with a series of checks to ensure its work follows federal and state rules.
Little of that matters to local residents, and none of it is their fault. As one resident told Ross, “We’re the community that gets caught in the middle.”
They’re justified to feel that way. Of course, companies should be fairly paid for the work and investment they pour into our communities. And we understand the need to ensure that public money is spent transparently and toward the objective for which it was allocated.
We urge Conexon and state officials to resolve this dispute and get the fiber into Lake Providence with all due haste. Even more importantly, we urge each side to learn from this example so that such delays are not repeated elsewhere.
No other community should end up caught in the middle.