Contact: Lauren Gaydos, 703-351-2015
Arlington, Va., (July 28, 2021)—The NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association Smart Rural CommunitySM program has released a white paper on the role of fiber broadband in agriculture and how broadband-enabled technologies can improve farming efficiencies and outputs.
The paper, “From Fiber to Field: The Role of Rural Broadband in Emerging Agricultural Technology,” provides an overview of current “precision agriculture” technology and discusses how future-proof, scalable broadband connectivity is key to ensuring the success of this technology. Precision agriculture technology relies on both robust fixed and mobile broadband networks to support low-latency, high-capacity transmissions. The paper explains the value of fiber broadband networks to support the efficiencies enabled by ag tech.
“Fiber-based internet plays a critical role in our economy, and agriculture is no exception,” said NTCA Chief Executive Officer Shirley Bloomfield. “In our Smart Rural Communities, it’s not just ‘fiber to the home’ – it’s ‘fiber to the field’ as broadband connectivity from local NTCA providers has transformed farming in their communities.”
“From Fiber to Field” was released last week at Purdue University within a NIST Global Cities Team Challenge workshop on smart agriculture and rural broadband that featured two NTCA Smart Rural Community member companies: Sacred Wind Communications (Ya-Ta-Hey, N.M.) and New Lisbon Telephone Company (New Lisbon, Ind.). The paper’s author, Joshua Seidemann, vice president of policy at NTCA, is available for interviews regarding the paper’s contents.
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Smart Rural CommunitySM is an initiative of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association. Smart Rural Community comprises programming relating to and promoting rural broadband networks and their broadband-enabled applications that communities can leverage to foster innovative agricultural, economic development, education, health care, government services, public safety and other vital services. Smart Rural Community administers award and best practices programming as well educational resource through original research and white papers that investigate issues relating to rural broadband deployment, adoption and use. For information, please visit www.smartruralcommunity.org.