There are times, ok, many of them when Josh Seidemann, our VP of Policy simply says things better than I ever can. Given his way with words, I am sharing his latest as he recapped the year of NTCA members creating Smart Rural Communities. We are now well over a hundred of these designated communities across the country and I look for that number to explode next year as our members take advantage of a fabulous platform to tell the story of innovation and services that their robust networks inspire for their communities. With that….here’s Josh’s recent Medium article on why it was a smart year, in spite of everything else 2020 has been.
In a year of challenges, one might suggest that it can be difficult to celebrate achievements. Good news, perhaps, might be tempered by reports and images of enduring difficulties. But the opposite view may be taken, as well: Perhaps in such a time we should take specific effort to highlight accomplishments that made meaningful differences, efforts that enabled people to pivot and continue to learn and work effectively in their communities. If we take that approach, then indeed it was a very smart year.
NTCA member companies met the sudden COVID challenge by working with schools, hospitals, and businesses to develop solutions and ensure everything from rapid installs to upgrades to deploying mobile hotspots. Frequently, NTCA members offered discounted service rates to ensure that no student or teleworker would be left behind. Companies created DIY install kits to limit interactions between technicians and customers. One company maintained a “clean team” that was reserved to work with health care and nursing facilities. Another assembled “go bags” for staff, including laptops with VPNs and VOIP phones with external power supplies that gave suddenly-remote employees access to office systems and shared drives.
But the news may well be less about what happened in the early months of the pandemic and more about what unfolded in the years preceding the crisis.
More than two-thirds of NTCA members can deliver speeds of 100 Mbps or higher to their customers. More than 40% can deliver gigabit broadband in their rural service areas. These rates reflect year-on-year increases in broadband deployment and capability by rural broadband providers (and can be viewed in annual survey reports). We know, as well, that rural broadband providers for years have worked diligently with their schools, hospitals, chambers of commerce and other local organizations to develop broadband-enabled solutions for their communities. And nowhere do these stories emerge more than in Smart Rural CommunitySM (SRC).
The boilerplate language describes SRC as “promoting rural broadband networks and broadband-enabled applications that rural communities can leverage to foster innovative economic development, education, health care and other vital services.” But it is more exciting than that.
SRC can be characterized as the rural equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the mega-bazaar of emerging technology and vision that is held each year in Las Vegas. The remarkable thing is that CES is not simply about the future, but it is about the future that you can touch today. So, while I raced slot-cars with brain waves last year in Las Vegas, robots in Carrington, North Dakota relied on a rural broadband network to support in-home robotic devices that administer tests and medications and report patient information to the hospital over a fiber broadband connection. SRC is about using technology meaningfully.
For better or for worse, the pandemic swung a spotlight onto the principles that SRC has been promoting all along: the value of broadband operators working with other local leaders to identify and deploy broadband-enabled solutions. For the better, we have reached an inflection point at which the necessity of broadband in rural spaces is as apparent as flour at a bakery.
And policymakers are taking note. And leaders from a spectrum of sectors are getting involved.
In just the past several weeks, SRC providers have been profiled in government and industry meetings. In late October, we shared what rural broadband providers are doing to energize education, economic development, and healthcare at the NIST Smart Regions Innovation, Resilience and Recovery Virtual Workshop. This week, with NTIA, we shared with an audience of more than 300 people nationwide how the principles of Smart Rural Community can enhance local economies (and, yes, we profiled SRC companies there, as well). And, in a virtual leadership roundtable in Washington state, we gathered Smart Rural Community providers from Georgia, South Carolina and Minnesota to discuss how rural broadband met the challenges of COVID head-on. Using innovative broadband-enabled solutions, they ensured that students continued to learn, patients continued to heal, and economies continued to thrive.
All using broadband. All evidencing Smart. All invested in Rural. And all building Community.
A challenging year? Yes. But a very smart year, too.