I always love hearing from NTCA’s members about the creative ways they are finding to serve their communities and deliver the best possible broadband speeds to rural America. Coming off of two Summer Symposiums, our annual meetings for NTCA member board directors, I am even more convinced that America’s small, independent broadband providers are ready to embrace the challenge of bridging the digital divide once and for all using the resources made available by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other funding since the start of the pandemic.
If there’s ever a time to get creative, it’s now. With a once-in-a-generation opportunity ahead of us for the broadband industry, it is more important than ever before for providers to think about ways they can work with their communities and others to get the job done. Our Smart Rural Community program has long embraced partnerships and collaboration, and I am thrilled to share our new Smart Rural Community Issue Brief entitled “Partnership Opportunities in Rural Broadband Deployments,” which offers concrete steps for telcos to take to embrace partnerships. My many thanks to NTCA Vice President of Policy and Industry Innovation Josh Seidemann for authoring this timely paper.
Some of the fantastic examples of ways NTCA members have embraced partnerships include:
- Pineland Telephone Co-op (Metter, Ga.) and Planters Telephone Cooperative (Newington, Ga.) worked together with Jenkins County to provide services to previously unserved areas.
- Chariton Valley Telephone (Macon, Mo.) and Green Hills Communications (Breckenridge, Mo.) established a strategic agreement to deploy fiber across a bridge that crosses 3,000 feet of the Missouri River.
- Rainbow Communications (Everest, Kan.) operates a fiber network for a nearby Tribe, and Rainbow and the Tribe are actively looking for ways to partner on economic development and telecom training schools.
- Hardy Communications (Lost City, W.Va.) is working with all of its surrounding counties to deploy broadband to unserved areas.
These are just some of the many ways NTCA members are pursuing partnerships, and I expect a lot more stories as members plan how they will apply for BEAD funding and other programs. I encourage all of our members to consult the new SRC partnerships brief for inspiration! And more to follow on a webinar this fall with some of the partners we work with at NTCA on this important topic.