Stories of Innovation

Photo credit: Ben Lomand Communications (McMinnville, Tenn.) is moving its mobile Wi-fi van throughout its serving area to allow families to get online 24/7 . By Laura Withers Under normal circumstances, keeping the Wi-fi humming is a necessity for a...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association Social isolation among senior citizens has been found to play a role in depression, poor eating habits and other health indicators. Current recommendations and localized restrictions responding to Covid-19/coronavirus may...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association Imagine you play a role in an industry that, along with related sectors, contributes more than $1 trillion to the U.S. GDP each year. Imagine those related industries account for...

By Laura Withers The Rural Telecom Industry Meeting & EXPO (RTIME) is always a joyful, hectic and energizing event, and the 2020 conference brought an even larger display of rural innovation as NTCA members spread over three hotels and a...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association Depending on your source, the U.S. economy is either suffering or exhibiting great strengths. Prospects for workers are either dim, or dramatically good. Robots will either replace us, or open...

If numbers are your thing, then consider this: According to CISCO, global IP traffic will reach 4.8 ZB per year by 2022. (I bet you didn’t know there were numbers that big). What’s more, the number of devices connected to IP networks will be more than three times the global population by 2022; and, broadband speeds in 2022 will be nearly double what they were just five years earlier.

After nearly 17 years of leading Consolidated Telephone Co. (CTC), located in Brainerd, Minn., Kevin Larson recently retired from his position as chief executive officer/general manager to that of director of public relations. His telecommunications industry career expands more than 45 years starting as a technician and eventually supervising and managing various phone companies.

Vern Dosch has successfully led the National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) for the past 25 years, and during his entire tenure, he found many ways to support NTCA, its advocacy efforts, and the broader rural telecommunications industry. Dosch is a regular presence on Capitol Hill and has been a reliable supporter of NTCA conferences and programs as a tireless advocate and a humble, curious and passionate leader.

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association I guess my CES moment came at the BrainCo booth, after I lost miserably in a game of mind-controlled slot-car racing. Users were instructed to simply focus on anything and...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association My annual reports from CES each year include a photo album of technology or other interesting things I saw in Las Vegas. “Technology” and “other interesting things” generally present themselves...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association (Las Vegas) WIRED magazine recently featured a series of Venn diagrams that illustrated semi-plausible possibilities envisioned by not-entirely-impossible combinations. For example, a supposed Google acquisition of Fitbit resulted in, “OK...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association (Las Vegas) Technology spoke to me today. Not in grandiose visions of “meaningful” and “advancement,” but in simpler terms of “you won’t burn the steaks again” and “maybe you’ll leave...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association (Las Vegas) CES showcases innovative technology. Sometimes, that technology is an iterative improvement over a product that might have been developed and displayed previously. Other times, the product is less...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association In an otherwise slow week, my office email was jammed daily with preview messages about CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Some were from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which hosts the...

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association Telework. Business Incubator. Shared workspace. These are terms that were not part of American nomenclature when the National Rural Economic Developers Association (NREDA) was founded in 1989. At that time...

Amanda Floyd joined ATMC, a nonprofit cooperative owned by its members, as a marketing manager in 2015 after working for another telephone cooperative for 16 years. Under her leadership, ATMC’s marketing efforts have thrived. Now serving as director of marketing, Floyd brings relentless work ethic and commitment to making the initiatives of ATMC a success.

Last month, the FBI issued a warning that smart TVs, anticipated to be big sellers on Black Friday and into the holiday season, could pose security threats for consumers. Smart TVs can be hacked as gateways into a home’s internet connection; moreover, built-in cameras (which can use facial recognition to suggest programming) and microphones can be hacked to enable strangers to watch and listen to your home.

May 31 started off as a normal day for Zack O'Dell and his colleague Mike Teeples to go jogging. As they continued their jog in the early morning hours near the Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa in Avon, Colo., they encountered a woman in extreme distress who had been stabbed multiple times.

In March 2018, Jim Broeckelman, senior IP head-end technician, and Kyle Jones, senior communications technician, were both involved in responding to a fire in an apartment complex near their Nex-Tech office in Norton, Kan. Broeckelman and Jones came to the rescue of residents of the apartment complex when it became engulfed in flames early in the morning.

By Josh Seidemann, VP of Policy, NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association I was asked this week whether I could identify any research studies that demonstrate a causal relationship between infrastructure, technology, affordability, adoption, and investment in broadband infrastructure. It took me...