Small Towns ... and Broadband

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probly die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity

Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic thats me

But Ive seen it all in a small town
Had myself a ball in a small town
Married an l.a. doll and brought her to this small town
Now shes small town just like me

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be

Got nothing against a big town
Still hayseed enough to say
Look whos in the big town
But my bed is in a small town
Oh, and thats good enough for me

Well I was born in a small town
And I can breathe in a small town
Gonna die in this small town
And thats probly where theyll bury me

Small Town by John Cougar Mellencamp (does he still include the Cougar middle name?)

More recently, for Barack Obama!

And, I hear that he'll be appearing for Hillary Clinton soon also ... I'm guessing he's a Democrat?

The Small Town/Broadband Connection?

This article today caught my eye, from the Washington Monthly blog...

SMALL TOWNS....Tyler Cowen compiles his (impressive!) list of "anti-American attitudes." Among them is this:

4. I could not live in rural America and be happy.

Perhaps this is food related? Tyler's a foodie, and there's not a lot of interesting ethnic food in the sticks. I, on the other hand, could pretty much subsist on burgers and fries every day if it came down to it, so I'd do fine.

Overall, I've always had a hard time identifying with the largely esthetic dislike so many people have for one style of living or another. I grew up (and still live in) the suburbs, so obviously I don't have a problem with suburbs. But I like big cities too and I think I'd enjoy living in New York or Boston or London if the chance arose. (And I adore subways - though I've always wondered if I'd adore them quite as much if I had to rely on them on a daily basis.) As for small towns, they've always seemed attractive too when I've traveled through them. Very tranquil and quiet. I like that, and as long as broadband is available I can do my job just fine.

Reading past that nonsensical commentary - who cares?? - that last statement caught my eye. Fact is, when you think about it, having broadband in a small town, a job that relies on being on-line most of the time, and the dramatically lower cost of living - all three combine to make living in a small town not an altogether unappealing prospect for a lot of us, especially for those of us whose idea of a great Friday night is a video and a pizza on the couch with the family...go ahead, guess MY age!

Vive Simpllicite!

You can go into town when you need to, but live with a view like this out your back door! (Texas Hill Country image that came up in my Google Image Search of Dripping Springs, Texas, the Small Town closest to where my ranch is located...just outside Austin - 35 minute drive from my house).

Texas Hill Country.jpg

So, what's not to like?? May not be everyone's cup of tea, but from where I'm sitting, with broadband available, what's not to like?

Posted on April 23, 2008 at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

Impact of Rural Broadband Overlooked

In a compelling and heartfelt, if depressing Op Ed in the NY Times this week (see Lost Town Blues), author Tim Egan laments the decline of rural job opportunities and a sense of bitterness and despair over the ultimate fate of these once pleasant towns where a "real" life was possible.

People who live in small towns that have been passed over don't need to be told that they're bitter, or heroic. They're stuck, is what they are. The honest ones say they would follow their kids out of town, if only they had the means. A few years ago, a University of Nebraska survey of 3,087 people in rural counties asked people how they felt about their lives. Only 11 percent of them said they were satisfied with where they lived. Optimism, as much a part of the landscape as winter wheat, was disappearing.

This sentiment, real but wrapped up in pride over place, may be in part why the polls show little change in Barack Obama's standing since his comments about the bitterness of small towns and the working class. The pundits and voters are having two different conversations, not for the first time.

But what is often overlooked is that once remote jobs become possible with cheap access to broadband, the nature of Where one is located is far less vital than is How one is connected. Suddenly, it makes sense to locate where workers are available, where real estate is cheap, and where broadband is plentiful ... in short, rural America starts to look better than the Third World, or urban America, for that matter, for certain jobs.

As broadband spreads, I hope this will become more and more apparent.

Still, Tim Egan suggests, don't hold your breathe.

More after the jump.

So, solutions? On John McCain's Web site, he talks as much about reviving small town America as he does about Lindsay Lohan's love life - zilch. Clinton and Obama each have detailed, multi-point proposals. They're heavy on new energy solutions - solar, wind, converting crops to fuel, with faded factory towns doing the work. The problem, as we've seen with the huge rise in commodity crop prices, is that when food and fuel compete for the same source, family budgets strain. Hillary is out with a new ad in Indiana, promising to keep defense jobs in the state - pork as public policy, another sleight-of-hand trick for small town America.

Is it too much to ask one of these candidates for an honest but painful statement suggesting that perhaps a lot of these towns may never come back? Or that the way to economic revival is to lose the pipe dream that Google is going to relocate to an old steel town because they have a tax-free enterprise zone and some cool mountain-bike trails?

Maybe not Google, but countless small business opportunities become much more viable with the low costs and high connectivity that rural towns represent. While most of the comments overlook this fact, at least one commenter gets it,

He may dismiss the promise of telecommunications in the Rust Belt, and yes, it's unlikely that data centers will spring up willy-nilly (although many corporations are indeed looking at North Country locations because the cost of cooling data centers in them is much lower than in sunnier climes).

But one can gain expertise in numerous occupations in an urban center, then find much lower real estate prices and much more relaxed quality of life in any town well-equipped with broadband. It is up to these communities to equip and market themselves for the future of remote work.

Look for a few small towns to differentiate themselves with connectivity and strategies that emphasize quality of life, low real estate costs and lower overall Cost of Living, and great broadband connectivity. In time, this path holds tremendous potential for rural and rust-belt America. It won't solve all problems, and doubtless, many towns will dry up and blow away. But many will survive in this way, and some will thrive. No town or city has a lock on a secure future, but some have more attractive potential than others.

Future Success for any town is an alchemy that involves natural beauty, climate, personality, attitude, strategy, community cohesion, and CONNECTIVITY.

Posted on April 20, 2008 at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)

Rural Fiber: 21st Century Barn Raising

SwensenBarnRaising.jpg

Up in Vermont, they get it. I'll say it in bold, because I'm hoping more and more communities start to catch on to this approach practiced by the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network.

A community working in cooperative fashion can be a viable substitute for a corporate service.

This recent article on a Vermont rural fiber initiative - see Rural towns bundling a blueprint for broadband - emphasizes that a community working together can be self-sufficient. In this case, they're looking at raising the capital to build a fiber network, and potentially following that up with a wireless overlay network.

This is a very good article worth browsing, as it raises several points I've been trying to get across here on the site:

- opportunities for regional collaboration, including pooling of efforts within a region for mapping, surveying, standardizing approaches to ensure interoperability, planning, purchasing, and operations
- wired / wireless integration, where wired (fiber) excels at capacity and wireless is needed for mobility
- emphasis on community self-reliance, rather than waiting on the private sector to take care of a city or region's needs
- a practical and pragmatic business model with conservative payback

This is a model, believe it or not, that holds great potential in dense urban areas like Orange County in Southern California as well as out in underserved rural areas. The critical element is whether there is a spirit of community present in the region, which will drive the hard work of forging a collaborative agreement.

See the article excerpt after the jump.

Steve Willbanks, chairman of the Strafford Selectboard and a key player in the emerging network, said commercial broadband providers could not meet the needs of rural Vermonters.

"These fiber-optic connections are absolute necessities; not luxuries," he said. "We need them for our economical and cultural development. We've had seasonal residents tell us they'd move here in a heartbeat; they'd telecommute if they had access to broadband.

"There are people out there who would kill - almost - to have reliable broadband service."

More than 1,000 residents in his area have registered for service, Willbanks said. About half of the population targeted by the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network have no broadband service.

Tim Nulty of Jericho, who left Burlington Telecom in the fall to join the East Central group as chief consultant, said Burlington Telecom's business model would work well in a confederation of smaller, more thinly populated towns.

Nulty said low-interest loans would allow the $70 million, subscriber-funded network to achieve a positive cash flow in four to six years.

Communities, not technology, would shape the size of rural networks, Nulty said.

"Localized service is a huge, competitive advantage," he said. "You're calling on your neighbors for service, and you're serving a common interest. All we really need is a critical mass of about 25,000 - or about 6,000 paying customers."

Earlier attempts to serve rural areas with broadband, including state-funded pilot wireless systems, have fallen short of fiber-optic's technical advantages.

The East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, Nulty said, would permit an "overlay" of wireless coverage that could accommodate data or voice transmissions.

"It's feasible when you have an infinite number of antennae sites," he said. "Every phone pole is an antenna site. Perfect cell phone coverage, everywhere in the system, is one of our goals. And we can do that."

Paul Giuliani, a Montpelier-based bond lawyer for East Central, said the project has "only three moving parts": an agreement between towns; an agreement to design, build and operate the network; and a capital financing lease.

The latter procedure has precedence in towns' collective purchase of snowplows and school buses, Guiliani said.

"If this is a better mouse trap, maybe someone else will pick it up as a template," he said.

Posted on January 30, 2008 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

"OnShoring" and "RuralShoring" - How Broadband "Shores Up "our Economy

So, let's say you're a city leader in a smaller town out in the sticks and you and your colleagues are wondering what to do to stimulate your economy and keep the young people from leaving town in search of greener pastures when they graduate from high school?

See this article, Some firms replace offshoring with onshoring - Los Angeles Times for more details.

This article describes how the sinking dollar and maturing overseas Outsourcing markets are making Rural American towns look more attractive to large companies seeking to lower their operating costs. They're asking themselves, "Why not look closer to home when considering where to locate a sales operation, or a call center" That's a distinct possibility when your town has broadband infrastructure to support a business operation that would depend on being connected - broadband is a prerequisite. Take a look at your current broadband infrastructure.

Time to make a plan?

Does your town have what it takes to bring in new opportunity and keep 'em down on the farm?

Posted on October 22, 2007 at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)