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Editor's Perspective
The Independent beat
By Joan Engebretson
Feb. 11, 2008
When the chance to edit The Independent
came up at the beginning of the year, I jumped at it. In the 15 years
that I've been reporting on the telecom industry, one of my favorite
focus areas -- or what journalists call "beats" -- has always been
Independent telcos.
When policy-makers aimed to jump-start local competition through the
Telecom Act 12 years ago, few predicted the dramatic boom and bust that
would follow -- although in hindsight, we realized that
over-construction and unrealistic payback timetables would doom many of
the new companies that arrived on the scene. But while scores of these
companies crashed and burned, there also were some ironic winners --
incumbent rural carriers that took the opportunity to expand their
service areas into neighboring communities that often were underserved
by the telecom giants. And because the incumbents-turned-CLECs set
realistic goals for investment and return and were able to leverage
their strong track record and investment in their own community, they
succeeded.
Independents continue to be one of the industry's strongest forces,
often outpacing the telco giants in deploying advanced video and data
services. And, in rural markets in particular, modern communications
infrastructure can have a tremendous impact on the overall prosperity
and strength of a community.
In Horry County, S.C., Horry Telephone Cooperative helped improve the
quality of life and attract retirees from metro areas by deploying
infrastructure to support advanced tele-medicine applications; in
northwest Kansas, the competitive carrier arm of Rural Telephone Service
helped keep jobs in the community by deploying broadband in Osborne,
thereby preventing an agricultural company from relocating; and in
Stuttgart, Ark. -- a farming community also known as the duck-hunting
capital of the world -- broadband connectivity helped fuel the success
of Mack's Prairie Wings, a hardware store that transformed itself into a
successful catalog and online retailer.
Independent telcos are not without their challenges, though.
Traditionally, many of them have relied on money from the Universal
Service Fund program, but as we report on page 16, that funding is now
threatened. Consolidation among Independents also is bringing changes
-- good and bad -- to the market. And despite the progress that
Independents have made in deploying broadband throughout large parts of
their serving areas, they can't become complacent, as advanced
applications drive the need for even higher bandwidth.
I look forward to bringing you coverage of these important issues and
others. It will be great to reconnect with those that I've worked with
before and also to make new acquaintances. And I'm particularly
interested in hearing your own stories about how telecom can have a
positive impact on a community. Please send them my way, along with
other feedback and story ideas.
E-mail me at JoanEngebretson@cs.com.
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Podcasts
A
Telephony Podcast: NTCA's Dan Mitchell
The FCC recently proposed major changes to the Universal
Service Fund for rural telecom services deployment. Among the topics up
for debate is the first-ever consideration of a USF for broadband.
Helping to sort out the implications of these proposals for rurals
telcos is Dan Mitchell, vice president of the legal and industry
division of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Listen
to this podcast.
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Top News
USF
tug of war
As providers try to hang onto limited Universal Service
Fund money, only the FCC can break the deadlock -- but where it will
throw its weight is anyone's guess. Click
to continue.
Mixing
satellite TV into the wireline triple-play
Where terrestrial triple-play services are not
economical (in rural areas, for example), the lingering question for
telcos becomes: How can they seamlessly integrate a partner's satellite
TV service with their own terrestrial services such as video-on-demand
(VOD)? Click
to continue.
RLECs
see no revenue growth in 2008
Two of the rural telco sector's largest carriers --
Embarq and Windstream -- have predicted flat or declining revenues for
2008. Click
to continue.
Broadband
Census launches grassroots effort
A veteran journalist is attempting to determine for
himself just how accurate the Federal Communications Commission's rosy
reports of competitive broadband services really are. Drew Clark set up
his own limited liability corporation, Broadband Census LLC, to try to
answer the question of how much broadband access is really available in
the U.S. Click
to continue.
TDS
following in Sprint's footsteps
Telephone and Data Systems has launched a WiMAX network
in Madison, Wis., tapping into the economies of scale generated by
Sprint's upcoming Xohm launch. Click
to continue.
Grande's
Texas triple-play network goes up for sale
Texas cable overbuilder Grande Communications announced
today it was pursuing "strategic alternatives," potentially selling its
fiber network and triple-play business. Click
to continue.
Anticipation
grows for Tellabs M&A
After having cooled in the second half of last year,
expectations for a Tellabs acquisition are rising once again with the
start of the new year. Click
to continue.
White Papers
Read Making
the Case for Converged Ethernet Transport
Read this white paper about the advantages of
integrating Layer 2 Ethernet with Layer 0/1 Transport. Read white
paper now.
Metro Packet
Optical Transport for Differentiated Triple Play Services
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transport to enable a robust and economical Triple Play infrastructure.
Read this
paper now.
Special Report
Telephony's
Guide to Business Transformation
Verizon's Fiber Optic Service is one of the most
anticipated and closely watched technology rollouts in telecom's modern
era. However, what deserves an even closer look is the underlying
software infrastructure for enabling the services that will make FiOS
more than just another very fast network. Read more
from Telephony's Guide to Business Transformation.
In Print
Tough
enough
Most companies probably would not want to be known as
cutthroat. But in one part of Montana, the cutthroat trout is a good
catch, and Cutthroat Communications is a company providing high-speed
communications lines to an underserved population. Click
to continue.
Lucrative
roaming solution
Right smack in the middle of Texas, away from the urban
centers of Austin and Dallas, one of the most sophisticated cellular
networks is operating. Mid-Tex Cellular has launched the first
commercial software-defined radio wireless network in the country,
allowing the company to support both CDMA and GSM networks over the same
radio access equipment. Click
to continue.
RLEC
M&A to rise in 2008
Rural carrier consolidation is expected to heat up this
year, according to Jeff Gardner, CEO of Windstream Communications. Click
to continue.
Broadband
may be growing faster than we think
As it is, and may always be, with science: We still
don't know what we don't know. Turns out it's the same with technology,
as demonstrated in recent Pew Research reports about broadband. Click
to continue.
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