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COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2015 Business Expo
COMPTELPlus
|
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Beka Publishing,
www.bekapublishing.com12
DAY 2
Broadband Critical to the
Economics of Rural America
A
lmost half (46 percent) of the U.S. land mass
is made up of farmland—but these areas
are woefully underserved by broadband. In
his Monday talk, “Bridging the Gap: Bringing Large
Bandwidth to Underserved Areas,” Joe Patton, vice
president of sales and business development at
Tower Cloud laid out the issues facing the rural
America when it comes to the Digital Divide.
What happens when there’s no access? “Let’s take
farming as an example,”he said. “Agriculture makes
up 5 percent of the 2.2 million farms in America,
employing 21 million Americans, which is 15 percent
of the total workforce and six times what the auto
industry employs. We also produce 40 percent of
the world’s corn. In order for the U.S. to keep up, we
must improve efficiencies in production, which is
impossible to do with no bandwidth.”
Rural America is also losing population thanks to a
lack of technology, which is translating into economic
declines. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, about 20
percent of Americans lived in rural communities. Just
five years later, it’s less than 15 percent.
“This has a huge economic impact,” Patton
explained. “Businesses will abandon plans to open
new plants or offices because of a lack of workers,
which in turn reduces the tax base [and] reduces
the ability to pay for new technologies. Those are
technologies that allow innovation in distance-
learning, healthcare, education, telemedicine and
yes, the farming business.”
The thirst for broadband is there, he added. “The
use of connected and mobile devices is growing
at the same rate as other areas of the country,” he
said. “Streaming video means that bandwidth is
growing exponentially in the rural market just like
it is elsewhere. The drivers are the same.”
Unfortunately, enticing operators to build
out in these areas is a difficult proposition. ROI
times can be as long as five years. Tower Cloud
has addressed this in its rural networking efforts
in the Southeast by starting with an anchor
tenant—say, a municipality—whose patronage
can then provide funding for a broader deploy-
ment. And once the fiber is in the ground, selling
to enterprises and other carriers starts to accel-
erate the model. “You have to take a long-term
view,” Patton said.
o
(Awards, continued from page 8)
By Tara Seals
Alaska
Communications
Boosts Reliability
for Lifeline Services
with Accedian
The Metro Wholesale study is part of the
firm’s Report Card Research Series, in which
it collects direct customer feedback on key
service-provider operations and products across
four market segments.
“We have a great group of service providers that
received ATLANTIC-ACM’s MetroWholesale Excel-
lence Award yesterday evening,” said Fedor Smith,
president and managing partner of ATLANTIC-ACM.
“This year’s winners are truly best-in-class among
their peers, receiving the highest ranking scores
from their metro wholesale customers.”
Verizon continues to strengthen its position
as a provider of metro wholesale services, with
customers rating them No. 1 in five out of the six
operational categories, and as the top ranking
provider of voice and data value.
CenturyLink won the award for billing for the
third year in a row, highlighting the efficiencies it
has attained and continues to maintain in accu-
rately accounting for their customers’ services.
In the CLEC category, FPL FiberNet had a partic-
ularly strong showing in operations, winning four
out of the six operational categories, which Smith
said “really reflects their tireless effort to provide a
superior customer service experience.”
“And for the second year in a row, Inteliquent’s
customers have spoken on the strength of the
company’s billing operations, and the quality and
price competitiveness of their unique voice product
suite, as well as rating themNo. 1 for their sales reps,”
Smith added.“We also have a newcomer to the
winners’circle this year, with Cox’s customers rating
themNo. 1 for the value of their data products. All of
this year’s award winners can take pride in knowing
that their wins are a direct reflection of how their
customers perceive the value of their products and
the level of service they provide.”
o
A
laska Communications, the state’s
leading IT and broadband solu-
tions provider, has tapped Accedian
Networks (Booth 210) to apply perfor-
mance assurance across the breadth and
scope of its portfolio.
Using Accedian solutions, Alaska
Communications will deliver performance-
assured services to its customers, which
include businesses, schools and hospitals
across the diverse landscape of Alaska,
where connectivity and economics are
uniquely affected by a rugged geography
and extreme environment.
Network services in Alaska can be a life-
line, and Accedian performance elements,
deployed at service endpoints across
Alaska Communications’ network, provide
precise performance optimization and
monitoring, and the lowest latency service
delivery available, to ensure reliability and
boost the customer experience. The flex-
ibility of Accedian solutions means that
Alaska Communications can consistently
meet the specific needs of each customer,
and easily adapt if they change.
Seamless integration with Alaska
Communications’ operational support
systems permits customer self-install,
remote service activation testing and
per-second visibility into all key network
performance metrics. This means that
customers, even in remote locations,
benefit from rapidly deployed services
that are always monitored to ensure reli-
ability is never sacrificed.
“Alaska Communications delivers the
best possible customer experience using a
proven service delivery approach that puts
performance and reliability first and fore-
most,” said Keith Donahue, vice president
of product management and services at
Accedian. “Accedian is proud to be a solu-
tion provider and partner, helping Alaska
Communications serve its customers’ IT
service and connectivity needs.”
o
Tower Cloud’s Joe Patton discusses rural
broadband economics.