Rural America Online: Cable Television Brings the Benefits of Broadband Telecommunications to Rural Communities

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Today's fast-evolving cable television industry offers a staggering array of advanced services and technologies, including high-speed Internet access, a multitude of video channels, and real-time interactive data services. These services offer rural communities, in particular, important economic and social benefits not formerly available, such as instant access to news, sports, movies, and other cultural entertainment; the ability to communicate with other people around the world; and the opportunity to transact business without leaving home. Access to the telecommunications superhighway promotes economic stability and quality of life by connecting people, even those living in rural communities, with the rest of the world.

Traditionally, communities seeking to secure the advantages of telecommunications services have looked to cable television. Other competing systems, such as telephone companies, direct broadcast satellite (a wireless system that delivers communication services to customers via satellite), and multipoint distribution systems (another type of wireless system that is delivered by land-based transmitters) also have the potential to supply telecommunications needs. Yet cable television with its unequaled capacity and speed is best poised to deliver superior service.

The primary challenge of bringing advanced telecommunications services to rural America is, of course, economic. It costs a lot of money to build and operate a telecommunications system. From the facility where the signals are gathered and then transmitted to substations, to the distribution plant, which is a combination of co-axial wire coupled with more-expensive fiber optics, to the converter boxes that convert cable signals into video, data, or other usable information for the subscriber, telecommunications equipment is costly. Meanwhile, the cost of programming, whether popular movies and sports purchased from commercial suppliers or originally produced programs, continues to rise at astronomical …