Giving Rural Broadband Companies the Technology They Need to Gear Up for Growth

The Federal government’s investment in broadband received a hefty bump with the recent passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which earmarks $65 billion over 10 years to expand access. That’s driving growth for small-to-midsize rural broadband companies, which are finding opportunities to fill gaps left by larger providers.

The federal government has funded US broadband expansion since Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — the FCC introduced the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) for unserved rural areas in 2019, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $7.2 billion towards broadband initiatives for low-income and rural communities. So, these rural providers have a history of moving the needle — in this case, the one measuring megabits per second. But the global pandemic shined a light on disparities that remain in rural broadband. When schools moved to remote learning and more people began working from home, families needed strong, reliable internet connections that they didn’t always have.

This intensified political and market pressure to make high-speed connections more widely available. Now, funding is flowing into rural broadband companies that operate their own networks and provide wired or fiber broadband to customers that would otherwise be relegated to using dial-up connections.

As these smaller providers expand, they face challenges — and sometimes become key merger and acquisition (M&A) and investment targets.

This white paper highlights the strategic technology challenges that these growing organizations face and discusses how a unified cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, supported by an implementation partner with deep expertise in the broadband sector, helps these organizations scale up quickly to meet demand.

Rural Broadband Companies Face Growing Pains

As they gear up to take on more work and leverage federal funding, rural broadband providers are doing complete upgrades, massively transforming their processes and technology stacks. Many times, the core of the company is a monolithic billing system meant to serve almost all needs of the telecom organization, from provisioning to accounting — and often built on dated, legacy technology. These systems are often closed, without even rudimentary integration capabilities, and are provided by vendors that lack incentive to keep up with the changing needs of broadband providers, much less innovate.

“There’s a lot of M&A activity going on as the government has increased funding availability for rural broadband,” said Aaron LeBato, CEO at C Level Analytics, a NetSuite Solution Provider that works with these providers.

This activity began picking up about six years ago, when the government’s goal of providing reliable broadband in remote areas began to kick into gear. The US House of Representatives recently passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which includes $65 billion for broadband deployment, access, and affordability. Grants are being made available to states to fund broadband deployment and adoption in underserved areas, $2.75 billion is being allocated to the Digital Equity Program, and various funding efforts are now underway.

“Because the government is subsidizing these efforts, even a very small provider may be eligible for some major funding,” LeBato said. “When that happens, these companies have to be able to quickly expand their infrastructure, services, and customer bases. They basically have to become ‘big companies’ almost overnight.”

And there’s a lot more to come.

According to the FCC’s latest broadband deployment report, 83% of internet customers in rural areas had access to broadband at speeds of 25 megabits per second for download and 3 Mbps for upload, the minimum the FCC considers broadband, compared with 99% of those in urban areas. The government recognizes this gap and is working to fill it.

As it allocates more funding to improving those rural numbers, the federal government is also spurring growth in an industry that was once primarily focused on more populated regions of the United States.

Whether they’re adding more infrastructure, serving new customers, or preparing their organizations for a potential sale, growing broadband providers need robust technology to run their operations. With NetSuite as a foundation, C Level Analytics provides the systems these companies need to not only meet demand, but to expand their operations in a profitable, efficient manner.

Gearing Up to Take on More

Many rural broadband providers struggle with an antiquated billing and operations support system, known as a BSS/OSS. These systems generate customer bills, provision services, and may offer outside plant/construction capabilities. The problem is, they’re built with the “old telco” organization in mind and lack flexibility. They’re difficult or impossible to integrate with newer business software, leaving many processes stuck in spreadsheets and staff struggling with workarounds.

Most legacy BSS/OSS’s simply weren’t built to manage accounting, finance, or other back-office operations effectively. As a result, many rural broadband companies come to C Level Analytics looking to add NetSuite as either a complement to their existing billing systems or as a component that integrates with a more modern BSS/OSS system.

“These companies are dramatically growing their service areas, so having to consolidate different legal entities is a major process,” said LeBato. “These problems will only become more and more unsustainable as rural broadband companies grow.”