Getting access to fast, reliable internet shouldn’t force anyone to live, work or run a business in a big city.
While my colleagues and I believe that’s the way it should be, for the longest time that just wasn’t reality in America. Your Zip Code often dictated the quality of your internet, and that’s part of what led to what’s known as the “digital divide.”
When people hear that term, they often think of small towns or homes far from any city, places where the internet infrastructure many of us take for granted just doesn’t reach and isn’t cost-effective to build. The truth of the matter is that there also are hundreds of little pockets all around the Northwest that have been left to rely on aged technologies when their neighbors just down the street have had state-of-the-art fiber-optics for years. In other words, the digital divide does not distinguish between those who live or work in or near a big city and those who don’t.
As a suburban mom, these past couple of years have given me more choices when it comes to things like delivery services. I could venture out with my mask and hit the grocery store and stop to grab takeout on my way home, or order online and have everything delivered so I could spend a little more time with my family. But some of my neighbors just a few streets away don’t have those options. Simply because of the geography of where their homes sit, real broadband options are not available, making things like online ordering near impossible.
Let’s not kid ourselves, though. Rural Americans are 10 times less likely to have broadband access than their urban counterparts – a disparity exacerbated by the pandemic, when suddenly, the ability to work, go to school, see a doctor and much more was simply impossible without broadband access.
The good news is that when fiber-based broadband is added to a community, the possibilities of how we live are bound only by the creativity of the platforms available at that moment. And the ability to evolve those platforms becomes infinitely faster.
Transforming How Business is Done
When businesses first began digitizing, software programs transformed ledger books and spreadsheets into access databases and allowed fax machines to be replaced by nearly instantaneous e-mail. Those advancements rapidly changed how businesses could evolve, but now we’ve become confined by the capacity of the pipe – how much data you can send and pull down from the internet at any one time.
As businesses adopt cloud computing, requirements of a high-speed, high-capacity connections mean fiber will be necessary to remove the final barrier. It’s like redefining storage from file cabinets and rooms to infinite clouds, while removing operational costs from businesses in the process. With fiber, businesses of all shapes and sizes are no longer constrained by the scalability of their physical spaces and computing needs.
Long manual processes now take mere minutes even with massive file sizes. Businesses can leverage the latest software for everything from retail inventory projections to mining operations safety controls, to remote crop irrigation maximizing both yield and water conservation. Small, family-run restaurants can offer meal delivery via apps because they can now process orders over electronic platforms versus being controlled by how many tables are open or if their phone line is busy when people call to place a takeout order.
Furthermore, now it’s possible for rapid development of individualized tools and SaaS as a way to deliver applications to propel a business forward. No longer confined to the packages of software sitting on a shelf, businesses in locations that suddenly have broadband access can employ someone sitting literally anywhere in the world to write application code just for them.
With the explosive growth in remote workforces propelled by the pandemic, workers are finding solace outside the urban centers and businesses are finding talent well outside their local area. For every mile of fiber laid, the size of the talent pool for any open position grows. The work-life balance available to today’s fiber-connected workforce is unprecedented as they are unleashed from the confines of the physical office space and long commutes. Happy workers mean more productivity further driving businesses forward.
Changing How We Communicate
One thing the pandemic has taught all of us is that we need to evolve the ways in which we communicate…but that’s easier said than done if you don’t have access to broadband connectivity. While video calls have become the norm for many people, those in rural and many suburban settings simply cannot connect, but fiber removes that barrier.
At Ziply Fiber, we’re seeing customers employ SD-WAN solutions to give their employees VPN connections from anywhere in the world. And just as cell phones helped us get away from land lines at our desks, we know that if you’re not in the exact right spot for a strong cellular signal, sometimes it can be tough to stay connected. Hosted voice/VoIP products running on fiber help make sure that all the ways we communicate today – calls, video calls, messaging and more –results in a good experience no matter where we are.
Gamechanger for Cities
For cities themselves, access to fast, reliable broadband is one of the single biggest decisions to make when it comes to positively impacting economic development. Its absence dissuades modern companies – and their workforce with their disposable income – from locating there. Simply put, broadband that was once considered a luxury we now know is a requirement for modern living, regardless of a person’s Zip Code.
In Marion County, Oregon, where we’ve recently completed several fiber projects, the 10-year cost-benefit analysis showed an 11.9:1 ROI, meaning the just over $627,000 invested to build fiber in the area was estimated to yield more than $7.4 million in economic impact over the next decade. For a community of less than 500 people, this is an economic shift that will last for generations.
How to Fund it and Build It
Rural America’s digital divide exists, in part, because it’s not economical for ISPs to lay fiber and provide broadband in sparsely populated areas. But the lack of broadband access has reached inflection point on the national stage. It’s part of nearly every big speech and bill before Congress now.
In the coming weeks and months, federal and state governments will unleash billions of dollars to help fund the construction of broadband in areas (mainly rural ones) where it currently does not exist. The question is what local governments should do when this funding becomes available.
Well, contrary to what one might expect me to say…don’t have a private company do it all. The reality is the problem is bigger than any one company can solve. But local governments shouldn’t go it alone, either. Instead, develop a civic partnership and use each other’s strengths to benefit everyone. We have this unique opportunity to invest and maximizing every dollar to benefit of the most people is critical. Leveraging private companies who can bring the scale, expertise, and additional investment to make those dollars go further and get the work done faster will ensure we seize this opportunity efficiently.
I can point to literally a dozen examples of how Ziply Fiber has done this successfully in rural and suburban towns across the Northwest. Many of these local governments were considering municipally-run networks, but by working together, we were able to help them save and redeploy six- and seven-figures sums of taxpayer dollars into other important municipal projects, and we finished the projects in a fraction of the anticipated timeline.
The opportunity we have been given to close the digital divide is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and we must take advantage of it. The money we invest today will be paid back over future generations. Investing in infrastructure today that can be used by future generations without reinvestment in a few years because we didn’t choose to future-proof our broadband networks is our obligation. For businesses and communities that want to grow, we have this one chance to get it right, right now.