“People in the rural areas are not working from home because they can’t. They can’t lock onto a school server, they can’t lock onto a business server…. They are not doing zoom meetings. I’ve been doing zoom meetings in rural areas. You get seven people on the screen who are in towns and everyone else is a call in because they can’t make that connection.” These are the words of Doug Dawson, NCBM Board member and President of CCG Consulting, a municipally-focused telecom consulting firm in our tenth episode of podcasts by Chris Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance. In this episode, Doug opens our eyes on how COVID-19 just made the rural/urban divide “gigantic,” on why NC’s GREAT broadband grant program is “maybe not so great” (because it now effectively blocks small ISPs from applying), why the SpaceX Starlink satellite program might be described more as “pie in the sky” (our words) and then Doug’s insights on investing in the future. Learn why the minimum broadband speed required (or funded) to any home should be 250 Mbps symmetrical and how federal dollars should be used to pay for our future broadband needs, instead of funding outdated technology again (25/3 Mbps) by 2027.
