Connected Communities
- Details
- Published on May 15, 2013
- Written by Elizabeth Crocker
Yesterday, I spent about 11 hours on the road to get to Greenville, Pennsylvania so that I could visit the students of East Elementary School. Greenville, like many small towns I visit in rural America, has a beautiful main street but is sadly blighted by far too many closed store fronts. The 5th grade students of Jan Abernethy's class won our Connected Communities contest that we held in conjunction with Discovery Education, not only because they came in every day after school for a week to create a great video but also because they choose a message that was wise beyond their years. If you watch their video, you will see them compare their community to a small town in Australia that was also struggling economically but found a way to pull themselves back up and thrive. I love that a group of fifth graders is thinking about their own community's difficulties and trying to figure out how they can make a difference.
Call Termination Continues to be a Problem in Rural Areas
- Details
- Published on May 10, 2013
- Written by Elizabeth Crocker
Last week, I received a call from one of our NTCA telco members in rural Virginia, who told me they continue to have horrible issues with call termination. As he told me stories of people unable to connect with their elderly parents and being worried for their safety, it hit home for me that it is only a matter of time before a real emergency turns this issue in to a life threatening situation. Not everyone realizes that the problem starts with the carrier used by the customer who makes the call and some least-cost routers do not find it cost effective to complete all of their calls to rural areas. I was proud that this particular company, Citizens Telephone Cooperative (Floyd, VA), asked us if they could use our mailer on the subject in an ad they wanted to run in the local paper. The NTCA Government Affairs team then forwarded that ad to some of the VA legislators to show them that our members are doing everything they can to make their customers aware of the issue. I hope that some of our other rural companies will continue to use our resources to try and combat this trend. It is unconscionable that the problem persists and that more steps are not being taken in Washington to address it. I know that NTCA-the Rural Broadband Association is doing everything in case to make the FCC and legislators on Capitol Hill aware of it and to give rural telcos the tools they need to fight it. In the meantime, if anyone reading this is having trouble getting long distance calls through to rural areas, we hope you will go to www.fcc.gov/complaints to let them know what is going on in your area.
Duck Dynasty in DC
- Details
- Published on May 1, 2013
- Written by Elizabeth Crocker
Apparently, having NTCA members in town is good luck for Washington sports, because after I posted about the Capitals win in hockey, we had a fantastic day of baseball at Nationals Stadium, this past weekend. It was a perfect spring day for the Nationals to beat Cincinnati 6-3 and a great afternoon to be at the ballpark. However, the real highlight of the game was watching Willie from Duck Dynasty, with his trademark bandana and beard, who was sitting just a few rows over from us. Apparently, Washington has more than its fair share of closet Duck Dynasty fans because the crowds flocked to him throughout the entire game for autographs and pictures. I had no idea Duck Dynasty was so popular with the DC policy crowd....hmmm, maybe we should send Willie over to the FCC??
FRS Scholarship & Discovery Award Winners
- Details
- Published on May 1, 2013
- Written by Elizabeth Crocker
This is always my favorite week of the year because we get to call all of our telcos and students and tell them they won college scholarships! This year's winners were announced on the FRS website at noon today and they are a simply phenomenal group of young people. In the essay portion of their application, we ask them to tell us what they love about their rural community or why they would return to their hometown after graduation. This year, a striking number of applicants wrote that they were interested in going in to medical or nursing fields and that they wanted to come back home and provide better medical care to the community they were raised in. I sincerely hope that every one of them succeeds in achieving that goal! To all of our winners, we want to wish you a hearty congratulations and tell you that we look forward to seeing great things from you.
This week was doubly exciting for us because we also got to announce the winner of our Connected Communities contest, that was held in conjunction with Discovery Education. The best video was submitted by a class of middle schoolers, dubbed the "Powerful Penguins", from East Elementary School in Greenville, Pennsylvania. We will be showing everyone the video they created tomorrow but today, I just wanted to share the class reaction to the news that they had won. I hope it will bring as big a smile to all of your faces as it did to mine!
Senate Democratic Rural Summit
- Details
- Published on April 26, 2013
- Written by Elizabeth Crocker
Yesterday, a few of us "rural chicks" (as we have started calling ourselves!) were invited to the Senate Democratic Rural Summit, on Capitol Hill. The event was hosted by the Senate Democratic Steering & Outreach Committee, along with Sen. Mark Begich (Alaska) and Sen. Mark Pryor (Arkansas). They had an amazing line-up of speakers including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Sen. Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Sen. Jon Tester (Montana), Sen. Chris Coons (Delaware), Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), and the Honorable Dan Glickman (former Secretary of Agriculture). Not surprisingly, a huge focus of the program was on the current status of the Farm Bill, the importance of crop insurance, and on rural development and we had a large number of our rural partners like the Farm Bureau and the Grange, in attendance. However, it was also amazing to hear so many prominent legislators indicate that broadband access is a major priority for all of them not only because it has become an essential component of our agricultural efforts in the United States but also because it is the single most important factor in keeping young people from leaving rural communities. They talked about how access to broadband equates to job opportunities and economic development and they reinforced the notion that the importance of broadband simply can not be understated in today's economy. I couldn't agree more! Sen. Begich also highlighted the undeniable need for robust broadband in remote rural communities, because of the opportunities it provides for long-distance learning and education. The item that struck me most during the morning's program was Heidi Heitkamp and Mark Pryor's call for a new national strategy on connecting our nation through broadband. Although all the speakers were quick to point out that one-size-fits-all policies coming from Washington often do not work for rural communities, they still felt that a stronger push from the Senate was going to be needed if we are going to make national broadband access a reality.
