The document discusses the NTCA's Smart Rural Community Initiative which aims to recognize and build communities that utilize broadband technologies. It outlines the challenges rural areas face in healthcare, education, and other areas due to lack of resources and their disconnect from urban areas. The initiative works with third-party organizations and convened a summit to develop the concept of a Smart Rural Community, defined as one that uses broadband to support applications in education, healthcare, utilities, public safety, agriculture, and economic development. It highlights real-world examples and outlines additional applications such as smart grid technologies. The initiative also recognizes high-performing communities through a showcase program and seeks to build more pilot smart rural communities going forward.

1. The NTCA Smart Rural Community
Initiative
Minnesota Telecom Alliance Fall Conference
October 10-11, 2013

2. Outline:
• NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association
• Third Party Outreach: Rural Solidarity
• Smart Rural Community (SRC) Initiative
• Recognizing & Building Smart Rural
Communities

3. • Trade association, represents 900 small, rural
communications providers.
• Provide reliable broadband, voice and data
communications services in hardest-to-serve corners of
the country.
• Serve 5% of the nation’s subscribers across 40% of the
nation’s land mass.
• Besides telephone service, also provide video, wireless
services, home security, computer repair, data storage.
• Members work with community anchor institutions,
partners.

4. Challenges to Rural Broadband
Advocacy, Providers and Consumers
• “Your fault for living there” mentality
(Politics)
• Disconnect between urban and rural
relevance for consumers (Cultural
Disconnect)
• Regulatory Uncertainty: Universal Service
Fund Reform (Regulation)

5. “Why don’t you just move to a big
city?”
• Politics:
▫ Washington: Urban-centric mentality, have to
fight for rural relevance
 40% of our nation’s military comes from rural
America
 Natural resources: fuel, water
 Food
 Manufacturing
 Urban areas rely on exurban and rural areas for
environmental quality, recreation and tourism.

6. Economic Impact: Urban-Rural
Connection

7. Economic Impact: Urban-Rural
Connection (Contd)

8. “Most Americans could care less if farming and
ranching disappear, so long as they get their
burgers and fries.”
- The End of the American Farm

9. Third Party Outreach: Rural Solidarity
• Challenge: Political & Cultural Disconnect
from Rural
• National and local strategic outreach:
agriculture, public safety, health care,
education, utilities, small business
• Tied together: reliance on broadband.

10. Outreach Strategies
• Advocate stronger national & local rural
collaboration
• Identify and join strategic coalitions
▫ Organizations Concerned about Rural Education
(OCRE)
▫ Joint letters with third parties
• Organize summits
▫ Broadband Adoption Summit
▫ Smart Rural Communities Summit

11. Examples Third Party Contacts
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AARP
American Farm Bureau Federation
American Library Association
American Telemedicine Association
APCO International
Appalachian Regional Commission
Association of Public Land-Grant
Universities
Community Action Partnership
Delta Regional Authority
Discovery Education
Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association
Housing Assistance Council
IBM
Independent Community Bankers of America
National Association of Counties
National Association of Development
Organizations
National Education Association
National Farmers Union
• National Grange
• National Rural Electric Cooperative
Association
• National Rural Economic Developers
Association
• National Rural Health Association
• North American Equipment Dealers
Association
• Rural Community Assistance Partnership
• Rural School and Community Trust
• Southern Rural Development Center
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
• U.S. Department of Commerce
• U.S. Department Of Health & Human
Services
• U.S. Department of Vet Affairs
• White House Rural Council

12. Smart Rural Communities Summit
April 2012: NTCA convenes 50+ leaders from
government and “vertical industries” of
education, agriculture, health care, public
safety
Releases white paper exploring Smart Rural
Community concept

13. = ?

14. What is a Smart Rural Community?
A Smart Rural Community invokes broadbandenabled intelligent networks to support innovative
applications for
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Education
Health care
Utilities
Public safety
Agriculture
Economic development

15. A Smart Rural Community – more than
the broadband connection
A Smart Rural Community embraces teams of
collaborative leaders standing behind and promoting
the technology.
From manufacturers and application developers to
telecommunications providers and, ultimately, the
users who adopt and employ broadband-enabled
services, the Smart Rural Community is a team
effort of continuing development and evolution

16. What would Health Care look
like in a Smart Rural
Community?

17. Health Care
• Barriers to Quality Health Care in Rural
America
▫ More chronic conditions (i.e. diabetes, heart disease, etc.)
▫ Rising health care costs
▫ Physician shortage
• Broadband Answer
▫ More efficient health care service.
▫ Greater integration of patient information.
▫ Enables more entities to access patients’ prior health
history and coordinate care more effectively.

18. SRC Health Care:
Real World Example
• Nex-Tech & Smith County Memorial Hospital,
Smith Center, Kan.
▫ Telemedicine and health information technology
(HIT) require high-speed broadband.
▫ Next-Tech provides broadband services to 11 hospitals
and 14 rural clinics.
▫ Using a broadband connection provided by Nex-Tech,
Smith County Memorial Hospital communicates with
specialists at larger regional hospitals to enable
remote medical diagnostics and monitoring.

19. What would Education look
like in a Smart Rural
Community?

20. Education
• Barriers to Quality Education in Rural America:
▫ Scarcity of capable math and science teachers.
▫ Geographically unbalanced distribution of K-12 teachers.
▫ 40% of U.S. public school districts require online learning
resources.
▫ Especially affects AP, special ed, foreign language.
• Broadband Answer:
▫ Instruction via broadband can give schools that are
lacking these resources a chance to be on equal footing as
their more urban or well-equipped counterparts.

21. SRC Ed: Real World Example
• Halstad Telephone Co. (HTC) in Halstad, M.N.
▫ HTC part of consortium rural telecom providers,
connects 126 schools and 43 libraries in MN.
▫ HTC network allows students to take courses not
available to them: AP, foreign language, special
education.
▫ HTC provided Discovery Education service to its 4 K-12
schools.

22. Additional SRC Applications
• Agriculture: Broadband enables farmers to increase the efficiency of their production
by reducing costs, increasing productivity and allowing them to tap into new markets.
• Utilities: In the form of Smart Grid technology, broadband and IP Connectivity helps
create a more efficient and responsive network for the
generation/transmission/distribution/consumption of power.
• Government Services: Governments can more easily interact with citizens online to
distribute information, conduct transactions, enable collaboration between agencies, etc.
• Public Safety: Broadband can enable public safety managers to track police/fire
resources, have medical responders access patient EHRs and transmit real-time
biometric readings, police to have access to criminal databases and on-site video
surveillance, etc.

23. The Message
• The vitality of any community is dependent on
access to quality health care, education, public
safety, and economic opportunities.
• Rural communities in particular face unique access
challenges.
• Broadband reduces challenges by providing rural
communities with quality, cost-effective
opportunities access to new technologies, gain
new skills and reach new markets.

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Building Smart Rural Communities
• Advisory Committee: recruiting expertise
• NTCA member voices in the process
• Expanding the circle of expertise

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SRC Advisory Committee
NTCA Associate Member Advisory Council
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
(Chair)
National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative
NTCA Innovation & Technology Committee
Rural School and Community Trust
(Chairs)
TCA
American Farm Bureau Federation
Veterans Health Administration's Office of Rural
American Telemedicine Association (ATA)
Health
Calix
CHR Solutions
Dickey Rural Networks
Discovery Education
National Information Solutions Cooperative
National Rural Economic Developers Association

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Recognizing Smart Rural Communities
• Smart Rural Communities have been built
• Providing a vehicle to inform, educate and
inspire
• Expert peer review

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SRC Showcase – Phase I

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Showcasing the Best and Brightest
• Showcase and Paradigm Program
• Nominations accepted June 17 – July 31
• Announcements at NTCA Fall Conference,
September 2013

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EXTRA! Showcase/Paradigm News
• Nearly two-dozen applicants
• Highlighted industries: education; health care;
national security
• Review and scoring by Advisory Committee

30. And the award goes to…

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Showcase and Paradigm Awards
1. Blue Valley Tele-Communications, Inc. (Home, Kan.)
2. DRN (Ellendale, N.D.)
3. ITS Telecom (Indiantown, Fla.)
4. Mutual Telephone Company (Little River, Kan.)
5. Nex-Tech Inc. (Hays, Kan.)
6. Park Region Telephone/Otter Tail Telcom
(Underwood, Minn.)
7. West Central Telephone Association (Sebeka,
Minn.)

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SRC Trailblazers
• Adams Telephone Co-Operative (Golden, Ill.)
• BEK Communications (Steele, N.D.)
• Big Bend Telephone Co. (Alpine, Texas)
• Burke's Garden Telephone Co. (Tazewell, Va.)
• Consolidated Telephone Co. (Brainerd,
Minn.)
• Farmers Mutual Telephone Co.
(Bellingham, Minn.)

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SRC Trailblazers
• Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Association
(Brandon, Minn.)
• Midstate Communications Inc. (Kimball, S.D.)
• Perry Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc. (St.
Meinrad, Ind.)
• Scott County Telephone Cooperative (Gate City, Va.)
• Spring Grove Communications (Spring Grove,
Minn.)
• Wilkes Telecommunications (Wilkesboro, N.C.)
• Nex-Tech Inc. (Norton, Kan.)

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Major scoring criteria/Telling the
Smart Story
• Use of broadband in meeting needs of major
industries, including commercial, government,
and not-for-profit
• Recruitment, retention, and expansion of
commercial, government, and not-for profit
industries
• Economic and societal impacts
• Efforts for the future
• Collaboration with local leaders

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SRC Pilot – Phase II

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“We’ve only just begun . . .”
• The goal is to build
• Showcasing and mentoring
• The network of ideas
• Pilots

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Contact
jgolden@ntca.org
or
SmartRural@ntca.org