Cooperative broadband boon to rural Missouri

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Rural life has its perks clean air, friendly people and lots of greenery.|ret||ret||tab|

Unfortunately, rural living all too often means giving up many big-city conveniences. |ret||ret||tab|

Seventy years ago one of those perks included electricity. Most big electric companies had no economic incentive to bring electricity to sparsely populated, rural Missouri; today most big telecommunications companies have no economic incentive to bring high-tech services like broadband connectivity to rural areas.|ret||ret||tab|

In the 1930s and 1940s, rural towns banded together to form electric cooperatives to bring in electricity. That same method is now being applied to telecommunications.|ret||ret||tab|

"We said, Let's go ahead and repeat history' if you will," in providing broadband services, said Mindy Bransfield, a marketing account specialist with Marshfield-based Sho-Me Power Electric Cooperative.|ret||ret||tab|

Planning for the Cooperative Broadband Network began about five years ago when Sho-Me decided to replace its microwave-based communication system and it opted to install fiber-optic cables. The company also decided to offer broadband services to its customers.|ret||ret||tab|

"We felt that rural Missouri was in a bad way for broadband connectivity," said Tim Lewis, director of marketing for Sho-Me Power.|ret||ret||tab|

The Cooperatives' Broadband Network runs across Oklahoma and Missouri and includes more than 2,500 miles of fiber-optic lines.|ret||ret||tab|

Those who will benefit most include commercial clients. Sho-Me Power lists school systems, banks, government agencies, courts, cellular providers, and many other types of businesses and agencies as clients using its broadband services.|ret||ret||tab|

However, Bransfield said that doesn't mean private individuals are excluded.|ret||ret||tab|

"We really don't market to the home, but we would never turn down a member that's interested in paying the monthly fee," Bransfield said. "Our target is a commercial client."|ret||ret||tab|

Sho-Me, however, does not plan to become an Internet Service Provider, and Bransfield explained that the cooperative functions only to provide connectivity.|ret||ret||tab|

"We are basically the string and the two tin cans," she said.|ret||ret||tab|

While the string and tin can analogy might help explain the concept, broadband technology is far more advanced than string. |ret||ret||tab|

The fiber-optic system transmits data across bundles of cable, each smaller than a human hair as pulses of light, and also handles far more data than an average home user's typical 56k modem, which transmits 56,000 bits per second. Sho-Me Power's system, by contrast, transmits 622 million bits per second about 8,000 times faster than a conventional 56k modem.|ret||ret||tab|

Without broadband connectivity, many businesses and government agencies would find themselves relying on 56k modems even when transferring massive amounts of data that easily overburden simple phone modems.|ret||ret||tab|

Gail Mills with Barker Phillips Jackson, a client company, knows how frustrating it is using a 56k modem to transmit large chunks of data, and credits Sho-Me with making much of her job far easier. |ret||ret||tab|

Not too long ago, Mills said, her company relied on conventional telephone modems. |ret||ret||tab|

"We tried using the Internet, and there was always a chance of disconnections," Mills said.|ret||ret||tab|

The company often sends and receives large files among its various offices. The broadband system also allows the company bookkeeper to access accounts in outlying offices in Mountain Grove, West Plains and Rolla without physically being there.|ret||ret||tab|

"It's much more convenient," Mills said. "We don't have down time, we don't have the frustration from the slowness."|ret||ret||tab|

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