Rural stakeholders voice support for AT&T/ T-Mobile pairing

The Internet Innovation Alliance, a non-profit group whose members include AT&T, lined up a range of rural stakeholders who voiced their support for the proposed AT&T/ T-Mobile merger on a conference call with reporters today. AT&T has pledged that if the merger is approved, it will bring 4G wireless service to 97% of the U.S. population (CP: AT&T: T-Mobile deal would produce a bigger, better operator ultimately benefiting consumers), which according to former U.S. Congressman Rick Boucher who hosted today’s event, would include many rural areas that cannot get broadband today. Boucher co-chaired the House communications and Internet committee for 15 years prior to being defeated in the last election.

Today’s call participants largely avoided discussing questions such as whether AT&T really needs the T-Mobile spectrum to achieve its goals—a question that critics have raised. Instead they focused on the benefits that broadband can bring to rural areas.

Educational benefits
Chris Studer, communications and marketing director for the South Dakota Farmers Union, noted, for example, that some rural school districts have only a dozen or so high school age students—making it difficult to justify an investment in advanced math and science teachers. But by using broadband to support distance learning, he said those students could attend advance math and science classes remotely.

Where broadband is available, Studer said, “A lot of farmers are sitting in their GPS-guided tractors and making decision from their iPad or Blackberry and selling soybeans on the spot as they harvest them. They are competing against people around the world and marketing commodities across the globe. For the next generation, more broadband access will be vital. If they can’t compete they will lose.”

Medical applications
Dale Quinney, executive director of the Alabama Rural Health Association, appealed to the self-interest of non-rural U.S. residents in arguing for the need for better rural health care. “We are a highly mobile society,” said Quinney. As non-rural people travel through rural areas, he said, they “want to know that adequate and quality health care is available every inch of the way.”

Quinney also noted that 12% of deaths in rural Alabama counties involved people who didn’t live in the county where they died.

Alabama, he said, has a physician shortage. It should have 421 more physicians than it does. Telemedicine, he said, could help bridge that gap. In addition, he argued that by helping to support better education in rural areas, broadband could help more rural high-school graduates get into medical school and later return to rural areas to practice.

Rural-metro Facebook pals?
Tyler Norvell, vice president of public policy for the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, also appealed to the self-interest of non-rural people. “There is a real desire to know more about where food comes from,” said Norvell. By supporting streaming video, he said broadband could help farmers use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to shoot and shares videos from their farms with people in metro areas.

Broadband also can help farmers learn more about marketing, best practices and how to be more eco-friendly by enabling them to watch educational webinars, Norvell said.

Another rural stakeholder on today’s call was Kelly Stowell, executive director of the Center for Business, Education and the Arts, who lives in southern Utah—an area where he said numerous western movies, including some starring John Wayne, have been shot.

“We hope to attract movies to come back,” said Stowell, who noted that improved connectivity would help in achieving that goal.

Stowell also noted that improved wireless connectivity would help in finding hikers who get lost in the national parks in the area.