National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC)

1 week ago | nrtc.coop | Randy Sukow

CFC released a brief video earlier this week, giving electric cooperatives its take on the growing demand for electricity as internet data centers appear in rural America. It is difficult to predict what will happen, said Chris Whittle an energy industry analyst for CFC Utility Research & Policy, but cooperatives will have to remain aware and be ready to make strategic decisions to meet future demand.

2 weeks ago | nrtc.coop | Randy Sukow

Rural telcos and ISPs have long prided themselves on customer service, especially when compared with large, national carriers. But customer service has expanded to include the concept of customer experience (CX). It is important to understand how the customer perceives the company when ordering and receiving service.

2 weeks ago | nrtc.coop | Randy Sukow

A growing number of rural ISPs are choosing to add mobile to their broadband services through the NTCA-NRTC Mobile Virtual Network Collaboration. NRTC Mobile Solutions exclusively offers members of NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association easy entry into the mobile voice and data business through its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service.

3 weeks ago | nrtc.coop | Randy Sukow

The middle mile has been a problem for rural broadband providers since early DSL services in the 1990s. Even today, the distance between an NRTC member’s service area to the nearest connection to the core network could be hundreds of miles. Establishing a fiber link to the core network is costly and with the distances involved, latency will creep into the service no matter how fast the last-mile, fiber-to-the-home speeds might be.

4 weeks ago | nrtc.coop | Randy Sukow

A vision of the future shared by some investors and government policymakers has internet data centers located in rural areas to take advantage of lower real estate prices. The task of meeting the enormous energy needs for data centers will lead the facility owners to bypass local, heavily regulated utilities, which will not be agile enough to provide power on the data center owners’ timelines. Instead, data center owners will collocate their own electric power generation with the data center.