NRTC Applauds the Goals of Smart Rural Communities Summit
NRTC CEO Tim Bryan joined leaders from large corporations, industry associations and the federal government at a Smart Rural Communities Summit in Washington. NTCA organized the April 26 meeting to get a wide group of public and private entities to begin the discussion of how broadband Internet will be the central organizing force in rural areas.
During the summit NTCA distributed a white paper, The Smart Rural Community, which provided a big-picture view of what broadband connections could mean to rural businesses, utilities, schools, hospital, government entities and others. “The mere presence of a robust, next‐generation broadband network does not create a smart rural community… Collaboration is a key element to creating this innovative atmosphere,” the report concludes. Rural telcos seek alliances with other rural community leaders to realize the vision.
“Over the past five to 10 years, NRTC has made investments in everything on that list [in the white paper],” Bryan said. “That’s what we do for a living.” In brief comments before the group, he noted the various ways NRTC has used satellite, wireline and wireless technologies to help its members spread broadband and advanced communications systems for electric utilities.
“Our goal is to make these things happen,” he said.
Martin Lowery, executive vice president, external affairs for NRECA, also spoke at the summit to emphasize rural electric cooperatives’ commitment to building out the smart grid.
NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield, in addition to organizing the summit, has made recent public statements to promote the idea of collaboration. In her blog on NTCA’s Web site, she reached out to the rural electric sector to broaden the discussion of how telephone companies and electric utilities can work together more closely. “I’m hoping to generate more discussions within NRECA and NRTC and look forward to hearing more success stories of these partnerships as we move forward,” she said.
Bloomfield said that she meets quarterly with NRECA executives on this topic. She also mentioned a recent discussion she had with a rural telephone company manager whose service area is overlapping with four or five electric utilities. He said that he had been too “lazy” to reach out to those utility managers. “Now, lazy is certainly not a word I would use to describe this GM—frantically busy running his telco would be a better description,” Bloomfield said. “But he does recognize that building relationships with electric co-ops could lead to a better way to monetize some of his existing infrastructure. It is certainly a better alternative than a redundant fiber network being built in his backyard.”
NRTC’s Bryan responded to the blog post say, “One of NRTC’s major continuing initiatives in 2012 is the development of the widest range of rural broadband alternatives, from fiber to wireless to satellite – all for the benefit of our telcos and electrics as well as their customers. We have been coordinating closely with NTCA throughout this effort… We are eager to work with NTCA and NRECA to explore joining rural telcos’ advanced fiber and wireless assets with the next-generation electric distribution.”
Exede Prepared to Carry on Connectivity to Remote Substations
Just as Exede takes over the task of satellite broadband delivery to very remote households, it also is likely to fulfill the same role for electric utilities that require satellite communications to reach their most isolated and difficult-to-reach electric substations for SCADA and advanced metering infrastructure purposes. WildBlue service has filled the need for some rural utilities in recent years. As the needs for IP-based grid communications systems become more important throughout the electric distribution industry, Exede should prove to be a useful successor technology.
NRTC’s Internet Businesses staff recently held a conference call with representatives of electric cooperatives with experience in using WildBlue to connect their substations. They offered insight into the issues other utilities will deal with as they explore using Exede.
Enhanced speed is a major selling point for consumers buying Exede, but it is less important for satellite links to substations. WildBlue members tend to have speed packages below 1 Mbps downstream for those installations. However, Exede has other advantages.
“The only real drawback has been the ping times. The latency has been significant on the WildBlue product,” said Jeremy Burt of Clearwater Power Co., Lewiston, ID. “That’s why we want to go to Exede. The latency is a lot lower. You’re looking at 600-700 millisecond ping times, which would be a lot more useful.”
Members said that in the past they chose the WildBlue Enterprise option for substation connections so that they could have a static IP address. Consumer connections typically use dynamic IP addresses, which change each time the user accesses the Internet. Such addresses are efficient and save administrative labor for the Internet service provider. However, enterprise business users often prefer permanent or static IP addresses, which increase reliability by allowing them to quickly locate their remote devices.
Electric utilities also prefer static IP for security reasons. “The reason we went with [WildBlue] Enterprise and static IP was so that we could limit the routes into our office,” said Bethany Chinadle of Triangle Communication System, co-owned with Hill County Electric, Havre, MT.
ViaSat is focusing early Exede sales on the consumer market and does not currently offer static IP with Exede subscriptions. Alana Pilkington, NRTC vice president, Internet Services, said that NRTC has been pushing for ViaSat to include a static IP feature, but in the meantime, there is a potential work-around. “What ViaSat is doing today instead of offering static IP addresses is putting a long-term persistent dynamic lease on the modem. The modem would have to be consistently offline for a significant amount of time before it would not get the same IP address back.”
Reliability is a high priority. When installing communications equipment in remote and rugged terrain, the utility has to be confident in its ability to access data on demand. Frequent repair trips to the antenna site are not a viable option. So far, SurfBeam 2 (SB 2) equipment for Exede service is proving to be far more reliable in rain fade conditions than the earlier SurfBeam 1 (SB 1) equipment for WildBlue.
SB 1 units represented cutting-edge technology when WildBlue launched in 2005. ViaSat has had time over the years to perfect and improve it. It had the opportunity to refine the new SB 2 units even more after they began deploying in Europe in Summer 2011. As a result of all this preparation, NRTC members have returned only 82 SB 2 units after 90 days into shipping and so far 20 of those have been found to have problems. By comparison, members sent back 2,500 SB 1 units after the first 90 days in 2005 following the WildBlue 1 launch.
But sometimes the weather does not cooperate with the equipment designer’s best laid plans. Whether it is Exede, WildBlue or any other satellite-based Internet systems, the user needs a clear view of the southern sky to aim the dish toward the geosynchronous orbiter. Dishes mounted on mountain tops or empty prairies are subject to wind, thunderstorm and snow damage. This has proven to be a constant concern for WildBlue utility users.
“We have one location out of 14 dishes that gets socked in with weather in a mountainous valley location,” said Clearwire’s Burt said. “We’re backing that up with a cellular service because in inclement weather, we haven’t had great reliability, even with the large one-meter dish.”
Although ViaSat does not suggest doing it, Triangle’s Chinadle said that some WildBlue customers found success by building shelters above their dishes to keep the snow out. “We actually ended up mounting all of our substation dishes on poles, which in our case worked better,” she said.
“There are companies that build dish heaters for the back of the dish and the heat will melt snow,” said Jeff Nordeen, NRTC manager, product support. “The other thing is … the newer SurfBeam 2 dish uses a greater surface area of the primary reflector, which in turn gives you a better gain. You will likely see better performance in inclement weather than with the older-style dishes.”
Telispire Spring Forum Workshops Cover Social Media, Marketing, Motivation and More
Telispire, NRTC's wholly owned mobile virtual network operator, held its Spring Forum in April, one of two events the company holds each year to assist independent resellers (IRs) to promote and manage rural wireless service. This year's forum in Dallas took a special look at the social media strategies IRs can use to the greatest advantage.
One IR, Garden Valley Telephone, Erskine, MN, for example, shared its annual promotional/media calendar using social media with other IRs at the conference in their own markets.
TEC, a communications service provider operating in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana, demonstrated how it uses social media in harmony with all aspects of its traditional media. It provided samples of direct marketing materials, spots tagged with social media online advertising. TEC also discussed analytics needed to assess campaigns.
Then TEC described its “five-touch” selling approach to its Business Solutions B2B program. TEC account executives showed the program’s sales support materials and talked about plans for expanding the program through social media sites, such as LinkedIn and Pinterest.
Faye Hill of Faye Hill & Associates in Dallas, a social media certified trainer, was one of the lead speakers at the forum. She offered tips on how to use social media and cited statistics to express how large the social media phenomenon is growing. Telispire posted the tips on its Facebook page.
 Along with social media, the boom in mobile apps is transforming the IR business. Telispire’s Doug Labelle discussed how IRs can attract new revenue through reselling mobile apps to businesses in local rural markets. Along with extensive support materials, each forum participant received “Scan Me” T-shirts and buttons showing off Telispire’s new customized QR code (see photo).
Telispire is offering IRs the opportunity to design their own QR codes, featuring their own logos and company colors. IRs who did not attend the forum in Dallas can receive more information by contacting salesinfo@telispire.com or calling 940-397-9603.
NRTC members, who are interested in exploring the Telispire opportunity to sell mobile phone and data services, as well as exploring the latest marketing strategies, should consider attending Telispire’s Fall Forum. Telispire is planning the next conference for September in Nashville, TN, dates to be announced.
Technical Change in White-Spaces Regs Could Benefit Rural WISPs
It has been more than five years since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that it would allow entrepreneurs to offer unlicensed wireless broadband service in the TV “white spaces” – the portions of the VHF and UHF TV bands that are unoccupied in any given market. It is still unknown when or if those services will materialize, but a recent Commission order could help rural wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) make eventual white-spaces services successful.
Many rural areas could be the prime market for white spaces installations because there are more vacant TV channels in low-population areas and because the VHF/UHF channels located below 700 MHz have excellent propagation characteristics. The new FCC order improves potential signal coverage even more by raising antenna height. Under the old rules, the maximum antenna height above average terrain (HAAT) for white spaces transmissions was 30 meters (98 feet). The new rules maintain that maximum limit but allow for a combined 250 meters (820 feet) of combined antenna and terrain HAAT.
The FCC found that this technical change would lower operations costs and allow for service deployments in several areas where it would not have been possible under the old rules, especially rural areas in high-elevation areas. “This will increase the availability of wireless broadband services, particularly in rural and underserved areas,” the order concludes.
The wireless industry has developed a transmission standard (IEEE 802.22) to support white spaces WISPs. It allows for downstream broadband service up to 22 Mbps over a standard 6 MHz TV channel. It is a “wireless regional area network” (WRAN), as opposed to the more famous IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. The aim is to have a broadband network that covers an entire city or rural region, similar to WiMAX, but that operates on unlicensed frequencies with the simplicity of Wi-Fi connections. The FCC's HAAT change should aid in that objective.
The standard also includes cognitive radio capability to sense when a consumer's broadband device is close to a broadcast TV station to automatically avoid interference to the broadcast signals. Difficulty with developing and deploying the interference-avoidance technology has been the main reason why broadband service in the TV white spaces is still not available after the FCC first approved it in October 2006. Broadcasters have disputed the reliability of those technologies and have kept further progress toward broadband service in the TV bands bottled up within the FCC and the courts.
There has been some recent progress. The FCC has appointed companies including Microsoft and Telcordia to act as data base administrators that maintain a real time, online record of broadcast and broadband signals for spectrum management. Two database administrators have begun trials of live service with temporary FCC approval.
NTIA Spectrum Report Adds Doubt to Reaching National Broadband Plan Goals
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency that manages radio spectrum for the Defense Department and federal other agencies dumped cold water on the idea of using that spectrum to alleviate the “spectrum crunch.” A recent NTIA analysis lists several daunting challenges to a plan to reallocate 95 MHz located below 2 GHz (1755-1850 MHz).
“The challenges…include the high cost and long timeline of the undertaking, estimated to be approximately $18 billion over 10 years, assuming relocation of most existing federal users, not including costs to incumbent systems in comparable destination bands,” the NTIA report concludes. In an appearance on C-SPAN following the report’s release, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said the cost and timeline were “too much” and “too long.”
In its 2010 National Broadband Plan, the FCC set the goal of reallocating 500 MHz of spectrum by 2020 to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband. The NTIA report suggests that it would be impractical to clear all federal spectrum users in time to contribute 1755-1850 MHz before 2020.
However, the NTIA analysis concludes that some form of spectrum sharing between commercial and government users could be possible. The report also suggests current commercial bands that the government could reallocate for displaced federal users. The government also could apply money received through auctions of 1755-1850 MHz licenses toward costly relocation expenses for federal users.
“We’re about to sit down with industry and with the [federal] agencies to have those discussions,” Strickling said. Simply clearing a band is “the way we’ve always done it in the past…. We just don’t have the ability to do that any longer,” he said.
If you have any comments or questions about NRTConnects, contact your NRTC regional business manager or write us at nrtconnects@nrtc.coop.
© 2012 NRTC
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Our Mission
To lead and support our members by delivering telecommunications solutions to strengthen member businesses, promote economic development and improve the quality of life in rural America.
In This Issue
• NRTC Applauds the Goals of Smart Rural Communities Summit
• Excede Prepared to Carry on Connectivity to Remote Substations
• Telispire Spring Forum Workshops Cover Social Media, Marketing, Motivation and More
• Technical Change in White-Spaces Regs Could Benefit Rural WISPs
• NTIA Spectrum Report Adds Doubt to Reaching National Broadband Plan Goals
• An Up-close Look at a Real-life Sensus Installation
• Public Wireless Networks Forecast To Be Part of the Smart Grid
• New USF Rules Could Threaten Telephone Service Along Mexican Border
• Where You Can See NRTC
In Brief
An Up-close Look at a Real-life Sensus Installation
 Working with NRTC, San Bernard Electric Cooperative in Bellville, TX, is busy installing Sensus meters for its entire 25,000-meter system. According to Doug Lambert, who has managed the project from the early planning stages to the current deployment phase, Sensus was the only meter company that offered everything San Bernard needed: a smooth transition from its existing AMR system to a fully functional AMI system; wireless connectivity; features that improve customer satisfaction, and MultiSpeak compatibility.
Lambert especially praised the MultiSpeak function, which was not available with any of the other meters San Bernard tested. “Without MultiSpeak, it would have been virtually impossible. It would have to have been customized and several of these other pilots and potential pilots we looked at were ruled out because of that,” he said.
NRTC recently conducted an interview with Lambert in which he provided many details about the project and forecasts the benefits San Bernard expects to achieve. Check out a Q&A of the interview at http://www.nrtc.coop/utility_solutions.
Public Wireless Networks Forecast To Be Part of the Smart Grid
Electric and other utilities traditionally have been hesitant to use public cellular networks for their field operations, partly due to cost and partly because of a desire to remain in direct control of their communications facilities. "Public Carrier Networks for Smart Grids," a report from Pike Research, Boulder, CO, predicts that utility attitudes toward public networks will change, largely because of the expected growth in machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Pike estimates that by 2020 utilities will order a cumulative total of 73 million cellular M2M devices and that wireless companies will collect more than $1 billion in revenue from those transactions. "With new pricing and service offerings specifically tailored for the large number of endpoints but relatively low aggregate data volume typical of grid applications, public cellular is becoming a real competitor to private utility-owned networks," said Pike Research’s Bob Gohn.
New USF Rules Could Threaten Telephone Service Along Mexican Border
Rural telephone company advocates have warned that aspects of the Federal Communications Commission’s new Universal Service/intercarrier compensation rules could harm investment in broadband and even halt basic telephone service in some areas. Texas elected officials are calling special attention to the case of Big Bend Telephone Co., which provides telephone and broadband services in west Texas, along a sensitive stretch of the Mexican border.
Texas Republican Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn are among those that have written the Commission to ask for a waiver of the USF/ICC rules. “It is our understanding that Big Bend is the only terrestrial telephone service in the area to rely solely on its own facilities. The two wireless telephone carriers and the one small cable company in the area rely exclusively on Big Bend’s backhaul and middle mile facilities,” Hutchison and Cornyn said in a joint letter to the FCC. The two senators also noted that Big Bend provides “critical communications services” to federal agencies in the area, including the Department of Homeland Security.
The new rules adopted last October gradually eliminate legacy universal service high-cost fund support and ICC support over several years and replace them with smaller payments through a newly created Connect America Fund.
Where You Can See NRTC
• May 7-9: Tennessee Telecommunications Association Spring Business Meeting, Franklin, TN
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
• May 8-10: CTIA Wireless 2012, New Orleans, LA
NRTC staff will attend
• May 8-10: Telephone Operations Conference, Fargo, ND
RBM Dennis Renowski will attend
• May 14-16: Ohio Telecommunications Association Annual Meeting, Columbus, OH
RBM Dennis Renowski will attend
• May 21-23: Tennessee Valley Public Power Association Annual Meeting, Biloxi, MS
RBM Jay Smith will attend
• May 23-25: Kentucky Telephone Association Annual Meeting, Lexington, KY
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
• May 29-31: New Mexico Statewide Meeting, Santa Fe, NM
NRTC CEO Tim Bryan and RBMs Jimmy Chandler and Fred Grantham will attend
• June 3-6: Oklahoma Telephone Association Summer Convention, St. Louis, MO
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
• June 5-7: Indiana Telecommunications Association Annual Convention, French Lick, IN
RBM Dennis Renowski will attend
• June 5-7: Washington Statewide Meeting, Olympia, WA
RBM Fred Grantham will attend
• June 12-14: Telecommunications Association of Maine/TANE Annual Convention, Rockland, ME
RBM Dennis Renowski will attend
• June 14-16: Carolina-Virginias Telephone Membership Association Summer Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
• June 17-19: Telecommunications Association of the Southeast Summer Symposium, Destin, FL
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
• June 24-26: Tri-State TCI Technology Conference - NC, SC, VA, Charleston, SC
RBM Steve Hanson will attend
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