With infrastructure week right around the corner and a new spending bill in the works, OTELCO wants to take this opportunity to stress the importance of broadband as infrastructure. Rural Americans Need to be Connected As it stands now, the digital divide continues to grow in rural America. According to Sharon Strover, the director of the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute, rural America is being left in the dust when it comes to broadband. 39%… Read more »
While We Were Away… We apologize to our blog readers for missing the last few weeks, but OTELCO has just been so busy building out fiber that there was no time to write. Here is a little peek into the rural broadband builds OTELCO has been up to this summer, what we have up our sleeve for the fall, and some interesting information from the USDA that we think will pique your interest. Fiber Buildouts … Read more »
A Visit to Mid Missouri Recently I took a trip to our OTELCO offices in Pilot Grove and Sedalia, Missouri. In our Pilot Grove area, we operate much the same as our locations in Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and West Virginia, in Sedalia we add fixed wireless Internet access to our product portfolio. I had the opportunity to spend most of my time there with our Director of Wireless Operations, Rick Lashley. Rick’s tenure with… Read more »
We often talk about customizing our approach to meeting a customer’s needs. Whether we’re deploying hosted phones or helping a municipality to develop a community fiber network, there is no cookie cutter approach. OTELCO’s own new FTTP infrastructure is no different. With Lightwave Fiber operations and build-outs happening in Alabama, Missouri, Vermont, and Maine, OTELCO is using 3 different deployment approaches. In the communities of Blackwater and Arrow Rock in Missouri, OTELCO is retiring copper… Read more »
Since Microsoft made its announcement about its Rural Airband Initiative to employ TV White Space (TVWS) to deliver rural broadband, discussions in the industry have been, to say the least, robust. Rural providers across America are struggling to deliver broadband to residents in low density areas, so this news from Microsoft has piqued a lot of interest and some skepticism. Basically, TVWS is a relatively low frequency, below 700 MHz, area of the television spectrum… Read more »
In honor of Earth Day, we’re looking at just a few of the ways that you can... More »
With telecommuting on the rise, managing a remote workforce might be the... More »
We’ve all been there. You’re settling in with your bowl of popcorn for a... More »