Dan Rogers, President of the Kendall County, Texas Economic Development Corporation, just spoke at the Broadband Properties Summit here in Dallas-Fort Worth. Kendall County is a rural area between Austin and San Antonio, and is part of the Texas Hill Country--a beautiful area of mostly very small towns.
Kendall County is served by a rural telecom coop that is deploying fiber to the home, and Rogers indicated it has had a significant impact on economic development. He now views fiber as a relocation "eliminator," as he termed it, meaning that communities without fiber services are eliminated early in the relocation process.
Rogers also said something interesting about retention. He indicated he viewed fiber as part of Kendall County's retention strategy. Businesses already in the region are telling him that they are able to stay because the high capacity fiber services are enabling them to get bigger contracts with companies that expect them to have the same kind of broadband connectivity that is available in bigger metro areas.
Rogers also talked about "big broadband" and "little broadband." He viewed "little broadband" as areas with copper-based DSL and cable modem services, and noted that he saw Kendall County as having a significant advantage because they had "big broadband," meaning fiber-based broadband.
The notion of "big" and "little" broadband is a useful shorthand for cutting through the fog of just what kind of broadband is available in a community, and could be a useful marketing slogan: "Bring your business to our community, where we have BIG broadband."
When an audience member asked Rogers what he would tell elected officials who are reluctant to make an investment in community-wide broadband, he had sobering advice: "Tell them they won't be able to bring in the kind of businesses they want."