The promise of smart rural communities

The journey to becoming a smart rural community

If the smart farm in West Lafayette, Indiana, serves as a poster child for what’s possible with the right combination of vision, technology infrastructure, and investment, the story of Troy, Montana—a small, remote, amenity-rich town of around 900 residents—is more representative of the starting point from which a vast number of rural communities across the country will embark on their journey to becoming smart.

In Troy, people often park outside the library after hours to catch the Wi-Fi signal. “Sixty percent of the patrons in the library are here for the computers and Wi-Fi, not including the people that sit outside in their cars,” a community member says. “As soon as the library’s Wi-Fi goes out, the place empties.” Community college students with no internet service at home stay at school late into the night to finish assignments. When the local library is overcrowded or closed, some residents go so far as to schedule their online activities to when they visit nearby towns.¹⁶

Many residents in Troy spend time conducting transactions with government on paper or in person, rather than using more efficient, less expensive online portals. “Everything is done online now,” says another Troy resident. “I am insured through the VA [US Department of Veterans Affairs], and I’d like to use the VA’s online services but can’t because of the connectivity.”¹⁷

Local merchants aren’t sure they can process credit cards during their hours of operation, and they can’t sell to the wider world over e-commerce channels. “Your town audience is so much smaller than your world audience,” one business owner says. “You’re not going to make enough business off of the people who live here. You need e-commerce out of town.”¹⁸

K-12 teachers and students in Troy can’t access online reference sources or search engines. No one teleworks for out-of-town employers or clients. Public safety officers trying to coordinate their efforts have to rely on two-way radios. “Connectivity could save lives if we had internet,” says a local dispatch officer.¹⁹

These challenges can foster a vicious cycle in rural communities. The population often shrinks because people leave town due to lack of employment opportunities, and real estate prices fall because outsiders don’t want to build homes without adequate internet access. As a result, industries decline, economies dwindle, and the brunt of that impact affects the quality of life for rural residents who may ultimately get left behind.

It’s not that Troy isn’t connected; it’s that the town’s access to connectivity is uneven and thus unable to drive real prosperity. According to Montana’s Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney, “When I visited Troy, community members identified a lack of reliable broadband as one of their most significant challenges, and it’s something that keeps Montana’s rural communities from thriving.”²⁰

Troy’s residents envision connectivity having cascading impacts across their community to improve access to health care, bolster the quality of life residents enjoy, enable children and adults alike to access distance learning programs in order to learn new skills, create coworking spaces for teleworkers, boost tourism and recreation in the area, enhance public safety, and offer more efficient transportation options.²¹

While rural communities may differ, one thing they have in common is powerful motivation to get things done, driven by anxiety of being left behind. Troy illustrates that idea perfectly: Residents there recently created a community broadband task force to gain funding for broadband and determine which domains the community wanted to prioritize in terms of investment. The task force has generated commitment in the community and is developing a strategic plan to organize Troy’s smart rural community vision, while also exploring cooperative options that would both serve the best interests of the community as well as provide the necessary last-mile connectivity.²²

The challenge in Troy, as in other rural communities, is that, unlike big cities, there aren’t full-time employees with the background or bandwidth to apply for grants, federal loans, and the like—or the budget to hire outside contractors to do so on their behalf. Both the task force and Troy’s city council are entirely volunteer-based, meaning there are no dedicated resources available to do the legwork involved in applying for assistance.²³

Moreover, the community is keenly aware that additional infrastructure and resources will be needed that go well beyond getting Troy appropriately connected. Training and equipment will be needed to expand telemedicine to remote residents. While the local elementary school provides tablets to its students, adults will also need access to laptops to take online courses to reskill a workforce that previously relied on now-closed mines. Abandoned buildings are in need of repurposing before they can serve as data centers and community coworking spaces where teleworkers, small online business owners, and entrepreneurs can gather and share ideas. Resources to market Troy as a tourist destination will be needed—and these resources are scarce. The list goes on. The potential benefits are real, but many actions need to be taken before the benefits can materialize.²⁴

The story of broadband access in Troy is not unlike the stories of many other rural communities across America—whether they are chronically poor, transitioning, or resource-rich. Of course, broadband is not the panacea for all of rural America’s challenges. But increasing access to effective connectivity is a critical first step to improving quality of life for rural residents and meaningfully transforming the local industries that underpin rural economies.

Making smart rural communities a reality

In October 2017, the president’s Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity identified rural e-connectivity as a central pillar for promoting agriculture, economic development, job growth, infrastructure improvement, technological innovation, energy security, and better quality of life in rural America. This finding prompted the creation of the American Broadband Initiative, an effort by cabinet agencies to support private sector expansion of rural broadband and effectively steward federal tax dollars in that partnership.²⁶ This is an important step, but it alone won’t create smart rural communities.

If broadband access was the only issue, virtually every US city would be a smart city. In the case of ACRE, it took not only connectivity but also sensors, drones, vast amounts of data, and the requisite computing power and talent to derive insights that could be applied to make ACRE a truly smart farm.

Connectivity may be a critical first step to creating a foundation for smart rural communities, but it’s up to communities to define what prosperity means to them, create a coalition to rally around a shared vision, and plan for leveraging connectivity in ways that bring that vision to life. To drive prosperous outcomes for rural residents, communities will also need to invest in workforce development and training, additional infrastructure in areas such as education and health, integrated data platforms, and other improvements.

This will require a true ecosystem strategy, including:

• Players from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors collaborating on innovative strategies to deploy connectivity infrastructure to help solve the ROI and capacity constraints in rural communities

• Better feedback loops between constituents in rural communities and policymakers

• Community members working closely with state and county leaders to drive change

• Coalitions and nonprofits lobbying on behalf of communities at risk of being left behind

Access is part of the equation, but using connectivity to transform the local industries that underpin rural communities requires deep expertise, collaboration, and motivation. There is work to be done, and every stakeholder group has a role to play.

To help connect communities and facilitate access:

• Simplify the process for applying for funding: Government agencies with funding programs should decrease the complexity and level of effort required from rural applicants. On the federal level alone, there are more than 50 programs related to broadband funding operated by over 17 different agencies. Together, these programs represent more than US$83 billion.²⁷ That’s further complicated by state and local funding available for rural broadband. Unfortunately, when rural communities seek to tap some of those resources, it is not always obvious which programs they may be eligible for. Conducting research on dozens of programs to zero in on the most likely prospect takes more labor than a small, resource-strapped community can commit—and begs for simplification.

• Revisit program requirements: Agencies that offer existing broadband grant and loan programs should review the requirements to make sure they do not inadvertently limit eligibility for rural communities in need. For example, if they base eligibility in part on current broadband speeds, they should measure the speeds that customers actually experience rather than the speeds that providers report, given the discrepancies that exist. Agencies should also make sure that the time and resources required to apply to their programs are reasonable for the communities they seek to serve.

• Improve the accuracy of coverage maps: Broadband coverage maps provided by national and state organizations across the country should be improved to help identify true “connectivity deserts.” This will help unserved and underserved rural communities make a stronger case to gain access to federal funding—not shut them out of opportunities based on inaccurate data.

• Explore alternatives to broadband: Communities should explore creative infrastructure deployment strategies that go beyond fixed wireless networks. Government funding and private sector investment should be dispersed across innovative technologies (such as low earth orbit, hot spots, and connectivity toolkits for farmers) to best address unique community needs.

To help connectivity create value in rural communities:

• Find ways to share costs and/or aggregate demand: Community anchor institutions or large employers should consider ways to share costs or aggregate demand, to reduce the burden on city and state budgets and accelerate economic transformation while supporting small, local providers.

• Inventory community assets and needs: States and communities will need to take inventory of community assets (such as health care infrastructure and farmland) and connectivity needs for residents, businesses, and community institutions. This will help them determine the extent of the need for better connectivity and quantify its potential impact.

• Understand what ancillary investments are required to fully realize the benefits of connectivity: States and communities will need to think about the full range of benefits they could gain when they improve connectivity and invest in ways to take full advantage of this improved capacity. For example, they might invest in workforce development and training programs to prepare residents for new, virtual work opportunities. Or they might invest in additional infrastructure for health and education, and technical expertise to manage integrated data platforms.

To help fundamentally transform rural communities:

• Establish a formal function to support the development of smart rural communities: State and local governments should establish formal mechanisms to coordinate broadband efforts across the state, share best practices for rural infrastructure development, and offer technical support to communities.

• Explore innovative public-private partnership models: Leaders should explore innovative public-private partnerships and new funding and financing models that align to both the needs of rural communities as well as existing and emerging business models.

• Develop appropriate feedback loops: Communities, states and localities, federal agencies, and private and nonprofit sector players will need to strengthen their feedback mechanisms to ensure that the programs and services, funding mechanisms, and business models designed to stimulate rural economic development are, in fact, doing so, and that they can evolve appropriately over time as the needs of communities change.

The challenge of connectivity is not new, but as we move to an increasingly connected, digital world, the cost of leaving out rural communities amplifies. With 5G technology coming to major cities, barring concerted action, the digital divide between rural communities and the rest of the world will be exacerbated, with large swaths of rural Americans at risk of being left behind. This is a scary thought.

No single sector or stakeholder can solve this complex problem. Collaboration across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors is needed to make rural communities smart, connected, and thriving. For the West Lafayettes and the Troys of the world, the question becomes, how can we best work together to realize the promise of smart rural communities?