The digital divide isn’t just a problem of big cities and rural townships. There are communities of all sizes throughout Northeast Ohio where more than one in four households has “zero broadband” — i.e., no home broadband subscription of any kind including smartphone access.
The region’s five biggest cities — Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Lorain and Youngstown — are on the list. But so are Ashtabula, East Liverpool, Ravenna, Conneaut, Elyria, Barberton and a dozen other smaller places.
Of course, each of these communities has an even higher percentage of households that lack normal “wireline” connections such as cable Internet, DSL or home fiber.