No one technology will solve the challenges of bringing affordable broadband to rural areas. In this video interview, Dr. J. Michele Guite of Vermont Telephone discusses their efforts to combine LTE wireless technology with GigE fiber backbones to connect 114k rural Vermont households to the Internet at broadband speeds. This interview took place at the 2010 Broadband Properties Summit, several months before the approval of Vermont Telephone’s ARRA application.
Access to affordable applications and access to content will be a large factor in determining the success of his initiative to bring broadband to the rest of Vermont. It is probably not surprising then that, as reported this by Jim Louderback of Advertising Age, Guite is telling his customers that they should have the right to purchase content on an ala carte basis.
Guite understands that, especially in this economy, value, which means paying for what one wants and not being forced to pay for things one does not want, will be a key to driving network subscriptions and penetration. With a relatively small workforce (one article reports they only plan on adding 12 more full-time employees), they will have to focus on the servicing the customer and will not be able to focus on things like program packaging, must-carry and retransmission consent, headends, etc.
I cannot wait to catch up again with Dr. Guite to get his take on the letter he sent to his customers.
Asides:
- The "Ask Me About GigE" phrase I mention was a "tag line" on Dr. Guite's shirt, as I recall.
- The hybrid fiber/wireless he references in this video interview is described in an interview that can be found here.