Tellabs Inspire Magazine: Rural America's Vital Connection

article reprint — TELLABS INSPIRE q3 2008

Rural America’s Vital Connection There’s plenty of fiber in small-town America — and it’s not all wheat. By Michael Brunner

Small, independent communications providers have a long history of pioneering technological innovations to deliver communications connectivity to America’s rural communities. While large companies focused their efforts on the big cities, neglecting the sparsely populated areas in between, local residents of those rural towns joined together to form small companies and cooperatives to ensure the availability of basic telephone service for their citizens. That willingness to serve their communities at any cost has connected rural Americans to numerous new opportunities — literally putting their towns on the map. From the early days of connecting rural farmsteads to town centers, to the more recent examples of the “high-tech connect,” rural providers have spent — and continue to invest — millions of dollars in the building and maintenance of the communications network infrastructure that connects their communities not only to each other, but also to the global marketplace. They have always worked to bring economic prosperity to their communities, knowing that their companies’ vitality is intrinsically linked to that of the communities they serve.

Fiber to the Forefront In recent years, as consumers clamored for enhanced services and faster access, rural providers sought a solution that would enable them to deliver the essential services consumers valued over a network that can meet their widely varied and constantly changing demands. The high-quality, proven reliability and ever-increasing capacity of fiber optic technology has emerged as the clear choice to bring our nation’s broadband capabilities to the next level. Whether upgrading existing copper lines or implementing fiber in previously unserved areas, deployment is well under way in rural America. NTCA’s 2007 broadband availability survey found that 32 percent of respondents are using FTTH or FTTC to bring broadband to some part of their customer base. That’s up from just 12 percent two years before. Fiber deployment means dramatic infrastructure improvements and a more powerful connection to the Internet, all of which increase the quality of life in rural communities and play a critical role in maintaining — and increasing — rural communities’ populations.

Changing Lives and Communities Rural broadband — particularly via fiber — has already had an enormous impact on the way rural residents live and work. Consider enhanced telemedicine facilities that enable doctors to diagnose homebound patients from hundreds of miles away, or the rural schools that band together to offer, via broadband, a foreign language course that no one school could afford on its own. Fiber networks also play a critical role in these communities’ ability to attract new businesses, which in turn spurs further economic growth in rural areas and increases America’s overall economic competitiveness. Fiber’s tremendous bandwidth capacity means

businesses can implement a wide array of advanced communications applications now — and be assured their communications infrastructure can handle the demands in the future. Another appealing factor for businesses is that worker productivity needn’t cease when bad weather makes rural roads impassable. Fiber networks enable workers to connect from home and gain uninterrupted access to files and applications at speeds that rival those of their office. The advent of fiber networks in rural America also creates perfect conditions for a reverse urban migration. Rural residents, particularly rural youth, who had been abandoning their small towns for employment or education opportunities in the city can now access the same advanced technologies as their urban counterparts. Highcapacity, ubiquitous broadband via fiber can help create new jobs and prevent the loss of others, both of which are key to rural communities’ ability to not just survive, but thrive. At the industry’s inception, our focus was on this basic transmission of voice across wires. Today the basic transmission reach encompasses everything from voice to data to video — and to applications many haven’t even dreamed of. America needs a clear national broadband policy to ensure our network infrastructure is capable of delivering the advanced services consumers demand. However, the uncertainty surrounding rural telcos’ traditional revenue flow threatens further rural fiber deployment. If we are to attain policymakers’ worthy goal of universal broadband access, we must have policies that recognize the unique challenges rural providers face in serving rural consumers and ensuring their communities are able to fully participate in the global economy. Fiber is an essential part of America’s broadband solution.

Michael Brunner is CEO of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA). For more information, visit www.ntca.org.

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article reprint — rural america’s vital connection

Acronym FTTC Fiber to the Curb FTTH Fiber to the Home

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