WASHINGTON-The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association used a member survey to bolster its argument that Americans living in rural communities served by non-regional Bell operating companies have access to broadband services. Those services are defined as 200 kilobits per second of data transmission in one direction.
All of the 120 companies-21 percent of its membership-responding to the NTCA survey offer broadband, but only 15 percent of their customers are taking advantage of it.
Almost all of the carriers offer Digital Subscriber Line service, and 27 percent of those use licensed or unlicensed wireless to extend their DSL service. One-third of the respondents are considering using wireless to reach those areas too far from a central office for DSL to be effective.
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The RBOCs are urging Congress to streamline the video-franchise process arguing that if they cannot offer video services they are unable to deploy broadband to rural America. The survey results show that adequate access to the Internet backbone is the biggest concern for rural local exchange carriers.
“Adequate access to a primary Internet backbone connection continues to threaten independent telco’s ability to compete with larger carriers in offering high-quality broadband service,” said NTCA in a statement accompanying the survey.