Daily Yonder

When communities design broadband infrastructure to facilitate healthcare and telehealth delivery, they obviously plan to connect medical practitioners’ hospitals, offices, and other healthcare facilities. Network connections to homes are growing in importance as government policies and market forces favor telehealth deployments. What about schools and libraries? In many communities, school districts and libraries outperform broadband in people’s homes.

[Commentary] The digital age and its applications has the potential to eliminate density and geographic proximity requirements, that were so critical during the industrial age. It is possible then, in the digital age, for a rural community to maintain its “rural” feel and continue to leverage its natural amenities while taking advantage of what only dense urban areas enjoyed last century.

[Commentary] If you just look at overall numbers, our population seems to be behaving just like they did in the industrial age – moving to cities where jobs and people are concentrated. Rural areas that lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy will continue to suffer from these old trends. However, the digital age is young. Its full effects are still to be felt. Remember it took several decades for electricity or the automobile to revolutionize society.

[Commentary] When they live in remote rural areas, millennials are more likely to reside in a county that has better digital access. The findings could indicate that the digital economy is helping decentralize the economy, not just clustering economic change in the cities that are already the largest. If you just look at overall numbers, our population seems to be behaving just like they did in the industrial age – moving to cities where jobs and people are concentrated.  Rural areas that lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy will continue to suffer from these old trends.

[Commentary] In Feb 2018, the Federal Communications Commission released its most recent Broadband Deployment Report, which bases its analysis on 2016 data delivered by all Internet providers. At first glance, improvements in broadband coverage are noticeable; a national summary of the accompanying map indicates that over 95 percent of all Americans now have access to the official broadband threshold (25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream). The intuitive “fixed” technologies (DSL, Cable, Fiber) made up over 95% of all 25/3 entries in the 2014 and 2015 records.

Public entities like the Federal Communications Commission and state legislatures are supposed to look after the common good. Instead, their policies are making things tougher for small towns and rural areas anxious to improve their connectivity.

[Commentary] On Thursday, December 14, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on a proposal to abolish net neutrality. People who care about rural America’s access to services and information should be concerned. Without net neutrality rules, consumers and the federal government have no way to prevent internet service providers from doing bad things to consumers until after the fact. And because there are no rules, how do you get providers to stop doing bad things to consumers and businesses?

[Commentary] The high rate of rural hospital closures is one factor driving the increasing interest in telemedicine, which uses high speed internet services to connect patients with healthcare providers. What some may not understand is that the push for telehealth may very well be the secret to advancing broadband itself in underserved communities, both rural and urban. By aligning healthcare institutions with schools and libraries that have telemedicine applications and services into a healthcare hub, a community can produce a powerful infrastructure.