Some Rural Areas Work to Get Adequate Telecommunications

November 2, 1999

The high-speed, broadband infrastructure needed to take advantage of telecommunications opportunities is not available in many rural communities. To overcome the problem, some local leaders are using a planning process that helps identify which strategies are most likely to meet top-priority goals and attract new telecommunications investments.

But strategic planning for telecommunications can be a time-consuming process even in small towns, say authors Kathleen McMahon and Priscilla Salant. McMahon operates a consulting business in Great Falls, MT, and Salant is an adjunct faculty member in ag economics at Washington State University.

The most effective strategic planning processes involve broad-based input from businesses, public agencies and households, they write in the latest issue of USDA"s Rural Perspectives magazine. Dividing a strategic plan into phases or smaller tasks may allow the community to contract out for the more technical services while completing some work in house.

"This approach also allows the community to select a contractor with expertise specific to that particular phase of the project," they say. And engineering firm, for example, would be an "excellent choice" for a system design but may not have the expertise to assess the market or facilitate the sort of consensus building required for strategic planning.

If a survey is used to gather information during the needs-assessment phase, says McMahon and Salant, it will take several months to design the questionnaire, select a sample, administer the survey and evaluate the results.

"Obtaining information through focus groups or public meetings can be done more quickly but odes not offer the comprehensive information about telecommunications use that can be obtained by conducting a representative sample survey," according to the authors.

Gathering data about the existing telecommunications infrastructure is another time consuming task, they say. Most of the information already is published in other sources, but finding and analyzing the data takes time.

"Often the available information is incomplete and needs to be supplemented with interviews and additional research," say McMahon and Salant. Local telecommunications providers can provide information about the location of central offices, switching features, trunk lines and service costs. Sometimes this information is available from company web sites, "but because these are private corporations, much information is considered proprietary and may require great persistence to obtain," the authors caution.

To access the entire article, use the Internet address http://www.econ.ag.gov/epubs/pdf/rdp/rdpoct99/rdpoct99a.pdf

In a separate action, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman last week observed the 50th anniversary of USDA's rural telecommunications program by awarding almost $13 million in grants for distance learning and telemedicine projects in rural areas in 34 states and Puerto Rico.

The distance learning grants provide students in rural schools the opportunity to take college preparatory classes taught by an instructor miles away. The telemedicine grants provide health technology, allowing patients in rural clinics to be examined by medical specialists in distant locations for speedier diagnoses.