Dive Summary:
- Information for the guide will be culled from various sectors of the industry, including CRN members, technology vendors, Department of Energy smart grid co-ops, and others.
- To help the flow of data and cut down on cost-prohibitive fiber optics, the guide will offer alternatives to co-ops such as cellular, spread spectrum, and mesh radios.
- Robbin Christianson, director of program operations and business management at CRN, said that the guide is necessary “to better understand the challenges and to support the decisions that co-ops are making today about their future communications needs.”
From the article:
To help co-ops with telecom build outs and upgrades, NRECA’s Cooperative Research Network is about to start work on a new guide “to give co-ops help assessing their own telecom needs and to evaluate available telecom technology that might meet those needs,” said Maurice Martin, a CRN project manager.
“Telecommunications is tricky because everything is changing so fast,” he continued. “It seems like every other week there’s a new wireless solution. When co-ops upgrade, they have to think not only about what they need now, but what they will need three years from now, or five years from now, or even farther down the road. ...
