While nearly all of us have spent at least some time this past year working remotely or from home and are living proof of the concept that remote work has really taken off during the pandemic, it certainly isn’t a brand-new idea. Between 2005 to 2017, according to Statista, there was a 159% increase in remote work, and today 11.2% of Americans are working from home, which is up from 5.7% of people working remotely in 2019. Many of us were lucky to even have these options and frankly we’re now getting use to it—22% of workers say they’d like to work from home permanently. While I continue to strongly believe that full time remote work makes it very difficult to create and keep a collaborative work culture, I do think that work as we have done it in the past is likely to have a new face when we get back to “normal.” Given all of that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the recent release from PCMag, a leading technology trade publication, who released a report in the past week ranking the best work-from-home cities for 2021. And it’s not just big cities: The list also includes suburbs and small towns. And not just small towns, but a nice number served by NTCA member broadband providers.
The data making these determinations includes affordable housing, remote-work friendly lifestyles (the number of coffee shops per person!), quality of life type factors like recreation and high on the list is access to fast gigabit and reasonably priced internet connections…especially now!
No huge surprises on the list in terms of high cost, coastal cities actually moving off the list but the most pleasant surprise was the number of communities in rural America served by NTCA companies. VTel in Vermont serves two communities on the top work from home list, Springfield and Pawlet. Paul Bunyan Communications in beautiful Bemidji, Minnesota with their all-fiber optic rural gigabit network, GigaZone, made the list of recognized 50. GRM Networks in American’s heartland of Princeton, MO also received the nod as did Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative in Girard, KS (looking forward to talking to their Rotary Club later this spring) as well as coastal ATMC in North Carolina. What wonderful recognition and achievement for the work these companies have done to make their communities rate so highly on a much noticed national list….I’ll wager that more folks are reviewing this list than they have in the past and goes one more step closer to fueling the rural renaissance that I think is possible for Smart Rural Communities in rural America.
Who knows what the next year will bring in terms of work patterns, flexibility and locations. The one thing there will be no turning back on will be the need for speed, capacity and reliability and I am bullish on even more NTCA member supporting communities making this list next year.