Anyone who has met Sachin Gupta, director of government business and economic development at Centranet (Stillwater, Okla.), knows he can be a bit enthusiastic when it comes to his passion for broadband deployment, the middle mile and all things in between.
I was a tad concerned, given his background with an electric cooperative, that his passion for fiber broadband might lead to a desire to proselytize for electric co-ops to overbuild NTCA member companies in the state, but I quickly realized that he really just wants to see how all of the dots connect to move broadband forward. Knowing that, I was thrilled to accept his invitation to join the Connected Oklahoma – Rural Broadband Summit in Oklahoma City this week for an opportunity to share my thoughts on two different panels.
The first discussion was all about the future of the Universal Service Fund (USF). It was a treat to have the talk moderated by Mark Argenbright, director of the Public Utility Division and Consumer Services of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the Oklahoma Universal Service Fund administrator, and to be joined by Blake Callaham, CEO of Pioneer Telephone Cooperative (Kingfisher, Okla.), one of the most engaged NTCA members in the state. It struck me how fortunate folks in Oklahoma are to have a robust state operation with a leader who understands the current complexities surrounding universal service. Additionally, Blake added so much to the discussion from the perspective of a recipient who serves some truly rural portions of Oklahoma and has committed to seeking additional support to bring capital to expanded deployment. I’m not sure that I brought happy news, and I certainly couldn’t answer the question of what comes next, but hopefully I left everyone with the sense that this was an all-hands-on-deck moment. As I shared with the room, anyone interested in the future of the fund has an opportunity to engage and play a role in setting its future course.
The second panel discussion was led by Christopher Ali, professor of telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Christopher first popped onto my radar when he reached out to NTCA as he was writing his first book, “Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity,” to find community-based broadband providers to visit as he journeyed across the country with his dog, Tuna. His appreciation for local providers has always impressed me, and I have long enjoyed our work together. The chat rounded out with Gigi Sohn, a long-time Washington, D.C., fixture in this space, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton senior fellow and public advocate, and Cliff Johnson, director of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s Broadband Initiative. We shared our favorite broadband stories, our anticipation for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program and the challenges that will come with it and our focus on other topics in this space. (My topic was how to minimize all of the fuss and adoration for Low Earth Orbit satellites and how I truly believe that, while the service fills an important void in some areas today, it is not the solution for a community-wide service, and it frankly relegates that community to “just good enough” broadband without the reliability and resiliency of fiber networks.) We concluded the panel with some takeaways and “homework” for the audience.
Given that I take homework very seriously, here are the assignments that I shared:
- Reach out to your anchor institutions and see how you might partner together.
- If you are an electric co-op, reach out to an NTCA member to see how you might create some scope and scale and what you can do better together.
- If you’re a policymaker, dig deeper to understand how the USF impacts your consumers' rates and deployment plans and plan to join our fight for the preservation and future of the program.
- Like the broken record I can be: tell you story! If you are a Smart Rural Community (SRC) provider, engage your community more on the ownership they should take for the successes you help power in the community and fully utilize that platform. For those who aren’t SRC providers, it’s important to still find ways to tell your story. Storytelling is among our most powerful tools, and it’s important to stop being modest about the work you are doing.
While all of the electric co-ops in the state were in the room, I was sorry to have only a handful of telecom broadband providers there. Still, it’s going to take everyone getting into the room, finding a way to break bread, getting to know each other and then figuring out the paths to partnerships for the good of the rural states you all serve.