In this brief video, Ron Hinds explains how GRM worked with the town of Lamoni, Iowa to implement a wireless solution that allowed their local law enforcement officials to leverage their resources, while making their communities safer. Lamoni, Iowa is also the home of 1976 Olympic star, Bruce Jenner’s alma mater, Graceland University.
Posts Tagged rural
In this interview Michael Loomis of Nortel Networks and Gary Bolton of Hatteras Networks explain the applicability of Carrier Ethernet to rural markets, using both existing copper and/or new fiber infrastructure. This allows carriers to provide services to rural areas that are comparable to what can be found in urban area. Michael Loomis points out how rural carriers are closer to their subscribers and are much faster to move to solutions than larger entities.
Tribute to Jack Rhyner
Jul 17
Paula Eller of Yukon Telephone, reflects on the life of a key industry figure that started in the industry that at age 16. TelAlaska’s Jack Rhyner, who lost his battle with cancer a few months ago, worked tirelessly to ensure Alaska’s rural areas received the support necessary to bring telecom services to the most remote reaches. Eller, a pioneer in her own way, worked closely with Rhyner on these common goals. She has seen and participated in many of the changes in the industry and her common-sense wisdom for balancing work and family have made an impact that would be sorely missed if she, her family and their company quit serving their community.
Universal Broadband
Apr 9
In this brief interview given at the IP Possibilities Conference & Expo, John Rose, President of OPASTCO, talks of the concept of universal broadband. OPASTCO represents 500+ independent telecom operators, which primarily serve rural areas of the U.S. and Canada. Rose suggests that broadband is not a one-size-fits-all service and, as such, operators will have to tailor services to meet the wants of their customers.
ViodiTV at IP Possibilities 2008 is being brought to you by Entone. 
The biggest news from day one of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance’s 99th Annual Convention is the Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA). By unanimous votes of their respective memberships, the MTA and MART (Minnesota Association for Rural Telecom) agreed yesterday morning to merge into a combined organization that will retain the MTA moniker. This is significant for several reasons, as their merger reflects the ongoing industry consolidation of independent telcos. In this brief video, we interview the current President/CEO of MART and the soon-to-be President of the new MTA.
The catalyst for bringing these organizations together was the departure of a large member company from MTA. This merger is fundamentally not about cost savings, but providing better service for the independent telco members. Mike Nowick, the current President of MTA, will be responsible for Membership Services for the new organization. And yes, the MTA convention will continue to be of significant national and regional importance.
Brought to you by Innovative Systems
In this brief video interview after his keynote address at OPASTCO’s 2008 Winter Conference, Ben Stein laments the loss of community in present day America. He suggests that urban America can learn a lesson from rural America, as well as the armed forces regarding the importance of community.
"The Face of OPASTCO"
Jan 18
Brought to you by Innovative Systems
In this brief video, John Rose discusses the importance of broadband to the members of OPASTCO and their customers. In his comments at the OPASTCO conference, Rose suggested that there probably would not be much near-term movement on USF and Inter-carrier Compensation policy. He emphasized the need for educating Congress on the importance of broadband to rural
He stressed that an often-overlooked aspect of broadband is that it is a moving target. That is, although OPASTCO members have done a yeoman job of bringing broadband to north of 90% of their customers, the bandwidth needs are rapidly changing. As a result, the operators’ investment in the network is never ending.
The investment in networks and back offices are huge and OPASTCO is forming strategic relationships with companies, such as Microsoft, that can help its members reduce costs and add value-added features to add value to the broadband pipe. He pointed out that OPASTCO’s customers are competing with companies in
A recurring theme of the C-Scape Global Forum 2007 was the combination of technology and process change to accelerate innovation and growth. John Chambers used Cisco as a real-life example of how they have used technology and process change to increase the number of major initiatives it undertakes from two to nine or ten per year. Cisco’s vision is bigger than increasing corporate productivity, however, as they want to transform countries and the way people live. As Chamber puts it, there is a huge opportunity to increase the well-being of the 3 Billion people who live on less than two dollars per day.
Here is a video interview of long-time cable industry veteran and Cisco, Bob McIntyre - video courtesy of Cisco Systems
Chambers suggested that Time got it wrong when they called the person of the year ‘You’. He said what Web 2.0 is really about is the power of ‘We’. The social and collaborative effects of the network and web tools, like wikis, instant messaging and two-way video, are changing the way people work, live and play.
He cited Cisco’s own use of its TelePresence video conference solution as having a profound affect on the Cisco business. He indicated that decisions at Cisco are now made closer to where the action is, resulting in less of a top-down/command and control approach. He described how a trip to meet various Cisco executives, that took two weeks of intense traveling last year, could be accomplished this year in a couple of days using the TelePresence video conferencing solution.
Chambers demonstrated the TelePresence solution by moderating a virtual panel. The panelists were physically in
The most impressive thing was a couple of water bottles that appeared to be on John Chamber’s desk. Upon closer examination, it was clear that these bottles were not in the room where I was, but were half-way across the world on the speaker’s desk in
TelePresence, combined with Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx, Arroyo and Scientific Atlanta, are indications of Cisco’s transition to a new company; a company that combines networking, computing and software/applications to provide customers with much more flexible business models and the ability to form teams and projects on an ad-hoc, yet repeatable basis.
Dan Scheinman discusses how social collaboration will help Cisco help consumers discover new content – video courtesy of Cisco Systems
An example of Cisco’s effort in the media world is what Cisco calls, the ‘Entertainment Operating System’. Essentially, Cisco provides the entire infrastructure for a media company to create a Web 2.0 presence. A couple of customer examples for this Cisco solution include the web sites of
Although this is serious business and, to some extent, Cisco is betting a lot on the timing of market transitions, Cisco also has a sense of humor and theatrics. They created a mock Web 2.0 enabled company and acted it out on stage.
The premise was an employee of this company in a far-flung location posted a video on the company’s internal web site suggesting that solar powered, water filtration systems could be very useful for third-world rural areas. Using a combination of wiki, TelePresence, podcasts and video, a virtual team created and manufactured a cost-effective solar-powered, water filtration system.
When they were ready to test the system, dirty water was poured into the machine and clear water emerged. There was a bit of debate over who would drink the first glass of water. Finally, the person who was leading the demonstration pulled out a mock-pack of brightly covered sweetener, labeled ‘Cisco Web 2.0 Cool Aid’. It is nice to see a company with a sense of humor.
The vision Cisco paints is one where there computing cloud/software solutions will increasingly compete against companies like Microsoft and Google.
The vision Cisco paints is one where there computing cloud/software solutions will increasingly compete against companies like Microsoft and Google. If this vision is realized, Cisco will be more than the Internet’s plumbing, but also its water.
Tags: cisco, web 2.0, collaborative,
I had the chance to catch up with Norman Gillaspie, founder of Transparent Video Systems (TVS). TVS has a digital cable solution for the small operator. In this brief video, Norman talks about TVS and how its product and company philosophy aligns with the smaller operator. To see the other 39 video segments we produced for TVS, please click go to http://www.transparentvideo.net/videos-1.htm. TVS’ sponsorship allowed us to provide ViodiTV coverage at CableNEXT.
Our interview with Paul Freude, of Paul Bunyan Telephone, is an example of ViodiTV coverage at RICA/RTG. The RICA/RTG conference featured cutting-edge rural independent operartors talking about their experience as competitive providers. In the case of Paul Bunyan, Freude discusses how this 100+ year old telco has grown by more than 250% this decade. With systems in over 100 jurisdictions, they probably have more networks implementing the little-used FCC rules for Open Video Systems than any other operator.
RICA/RTG Fall Forum Coverage Brought to you by RICA.
