Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Everything is Bigger in Texas: Including the Rural Broadband Challenge

Texas is a massive state. Second in size only to Alaska, Texas is over a quarter million square miles. And, while it's also second in population in the U.S. with over 24 million people in the great state, 75% of its population reside in the 60,000 square-mile region of booming metropolises like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio that dot Texas' Eastern portion.

What remains outside of these large cities and towns reaching inward from the Gulf Coast is an expanse that many simply call "West Texas"--as if it were a small sliver of the larger state. In reality, West Texas spans 3x the square mileage of East Texas and is dotted with nearly 2300 rural settlements, called Colonias, characterized by poverty and lack of basic infrastructure.

In the 630-mile drive along Interstate 20 from Dallas to Juarez, you can expect to see no more than one city along the way that boasts more than 100,000 in population. A handful of others dot the trail with a few thousand souls. But for the most part, a whole lot of small towns.

So, if you're ever so inclined to make this drive, think of two things: first, that your A/C is fully charged! Second, when you want to swipe your card at the gas pump... how does anybody get broadband out here? Or, when the officer stops to help you with a flat tire, does he even have email back at his station? How many stores, companies, and even government agencies in this remote part of our country go without the high-speed connectivity many of us take for granted?

The Texas DIR recently tapped into Accel Networks' unique fixed wireless broadband service to provide at least one solution to this problem. Via partner RealCom Solutions, state and local government agencies have special discounted prices for what could be the only broadband solution viable in many areas. More than that, however, commercial applications rely on Accel everyday, too. Point-of-sale, convenience store registers, ATM's, pay at the pump, and just about any retail that requires cardholder data transfer needs not only broadband, but PCI-compliant broadband.

Everything is bigger in Texas, and when it comes to spanning hundreds of miles with a data network with consistent througput and broadband speeds, Texas' size is not always in its favor. Accel Networks is glad to help.

Labels: Convenience Stores, Fixed Wireless Broadband, PCI Compliance, PCI Compliant Broadband, PCI-DSS, Rural Broadband Access, Texas DIR