“I feel like I really get it now, after being out here.”
That’s what one congressional staffer told us as we ate dinner in beautiful Montana, where the Foundation for Rural Service (FRS) hosted this year’s annual Congressional Broadband Tour. The tour is an opportunity for 20 staff members of the U.S. House and Senate to meet with NTCA members and experience firsthand what life is like in rural communities that benefit from broadband service. These are the folks who are writing the laws that fund and govern rural broadband and telecommunications services, and getting them out into the field helps staff better understand how their work impacts rural communities.
The three-day trip started off with half the crew experiencing the reality of rural travel – multiple airline connections and some delays! After a 20+ hour travel day for some, we hit the road last Tuesday morning with a visit to VisionNet, the middle mile provider in Montana. VisionNet works with several NTCA members to provide internet service coming in from places like Chicago and Seattle. We then got to check out how broadband is changing lives in rural Montana – first with a visit to Benefis Health Systems, which was able to use broadband-enabled telehealth to deliver care to hundreds of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then to a family farm where precision agriculture has improved outputs.
We also visited three NTCA members serving different parts of Montana, all with unique stories to tell. Triangle Communications serves over 17,000 subscribers in central Montana, from the Canadian border all the way to Wyoming, and has over 150 employees. And then there’s Northern Telephone Cooperative, which serves under 1,000 members – but over 3,000 square miles. Congressional staff got the chance to talk to managers and technicians and learn about the challenges faced by both small and larger rural broadband providers. We capped off the trip by meeting with SiyCom, a new Tribal broadband provider that serves the Blackfeet nation, while creating jobs on the reservation.
On behalf of FRS, I want to thank our members in Montana who hosted us, and especially Geoff Feiss and Charlotte Lauerman with the Montana Telecommunications Association, who made sure the trip was a success. Because of all of them, more policymakers will now better understand the needs of rural America and broadband providers.
FRS enriches lives by harnessing the collective power of the rural communications industry. Working in cooperation with NTCA members and partnering with rural providers to create opportunities through education, scholarships, and community grants, FRS also calls attention to rural challenges through outreach efforts to the public and lawmakers with programs like the Congressional Broadband Tour.
For more information about FRS, visit www.frs.org.
