Why rural landowners may be the missing link in broadband deployment

Rural broadband doesn’t just happen in a vacuum—it happens on rural land. But how do we turn landowners into essential infrastructure partners?

Connected Nation's host Jessica Denson sits down with David Christophersen of the Rural Tower Cooperative to discuss why the 'co-op' model is the secret weapon for accelerating BEAD funding, building community trust, and ensuring the future of American farming is fully connected.

Recommended links:

Rural Tower Cooperative

David Christophersen's LinkedIn

A Cooperative Approach to Broadband Deployment in Rural Areas (LinkedIn): 

Rural Tower Cooperative Launches Pre‑Screened Rural Parcels for Broadband Deployment (Total Telecom)

Transcript

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (00:07):
This is Connect to Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband. From closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds, we talk technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods. On today's podcast, we're exploring a part of the broadband ecosystem that often gets overlooked, rural landowners, and why they may be the missing link in successful broadband and wireless deployment across America. We'll talk about a cooperative approach that positions farmers and rural property owners as partners, and how that could dramatically accelerate bead, expand rural wireless coverage, and even help keep the next generation on family farms. I'm Jessica Denson, and this is Connected Nation. I'm Jessica Denson, and today my guest is David Christofferson, the general manager of Rural Tower Cooperative, an organization helping rural landowner owners and the telecom industry work together more effectively to deploy broadband and wireless infrastructure where it's needed most. 

(01:13)
Hi, David. <laugh> 

David Christophersen, Rural Tower Co-op (01:14):
Hi, Jessica. I'm glad to be with you today on Connected Nation. 

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (01:18):
I'm glad to have you. Uh, just for my, uh, audience and for your sake, for some reason, my Texas upbringing, I don't know what it is. Uh, I have a hard time with the word rural. <laugh> R-U-R-A-L. And so audience, if I, if I sound like I've got a speech impediment in that little part, my apologies. It's a hard word for me, and it's, but it's the name of the organization, so we've got to say it, rural tower cooperative. <laugh> Um, uh, acknowledging it sometimes for me, David, gets me through the day. <laugh> 

David Christophersen, Rural Tower Co-Op (01:48):
Yeah, I know. I struggle with the word too, and I'm the one who created the name. <laugh> 

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (01:53):
Uh, well, before we dive into your organization and what it does, uh, let's share some of your background. Um, I know you're located in Indiana, and you said today, uh, people are planting, right? 

David Christophersen, Rural Tower Co-Op (02:03):
Yeah, we're, we're starting the planting season, uh, I guess about, starting about two weeks ago, everybody's starting to get corn and beans in the ground. 

Jessica Denson (02:11):
And is that mostly what's grown across Indiana? 

David Christophersen (02:14):
Uh, yeah. So here in the Midwest, corn and soybeans are kind of the grain of choice. Uh, I, I, I imagine they also do things like wheat and hay, but for the most part, this is corn and, uh, soybean country. 

Jessica Denson (02:26):
Awesome. So I'm located in Louisville, Kentucky, so I'm just down the road from you. Uh, whereabouts in Indiana are you? Are you, are you near Indianapolis or ... 

David Christophersen (02:35):
So just north. I'm, I'm in the town of Noblesville- Uh-huh. 

David Christophersen (02:38):
Which is, uh, the county seat of Hamilton County. So about 30 minutes north of Indianapolis, kind of in between farm country and the kind of rapidly expanding suburbs of Northern Indiana. 

Jessica Denson (02:51):
It's a, it's a pretty area there. I've driven through there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. <laugh> Yeah. And, and do you, can you tell us really what a Hoosier is? Do you know? <laugh> 

David Christophersen (02:58):
You know, uh, when I was a kid and we would come out here to visit my aunts and uncles, they used to tell the story that, you know, back in the day, if you came out here in a covered wagon, at night, you'd pull up to somebody's house and they'd say, "Hoosier." <laugh> And, and I was like, "Come on, that can't really be true." Well, I, I, it's one of the mythologies of, of Indiana that it supposedly was people used to say, "Hey, Hoosier." <laugh> And that's how we're called Hoosiers. I, it, it works for me. It sounds, uh, pretty cool, but I'm not really sure. 

Jessica Denson (03:28):
It sounds cool. So let's go with that. 

David Christophersen (03:30):
Yeah. 

Jessica Denson (03:30):
We'll go with that. Yeah. So you, you grew up there. Talk about what it was like being, growing up in Indiana. 

David Christophersen (03:35):
Well, actually, I grew up in New York. Oh, 

Jessica Denson (03:37):
Okay. 

David Christophersen (03:38):
My dad, my dad was from Indiana, and we used to go back and forth when I was growing up to visit, uh, relatives out here to go to the Indy 500. And, you know, when I was growing up, I always loved Indiana because it seemed like such a magic place because it was just like cornfields in every direction. And, um, I, as I got older, I kind of, I think like a lot of people in the Northeast had this kind of dream of moving to a small farm town in the Midwest. And so in 2018, I decided to actually do that, relocated here to kind of my family kind of hometown area and, uh, the main reason, not only because I really wanted to move to the Midwest, but rural broadband, um, was really starting to show up as kind of a hot growth market in the Midwest.

(04:28)
And the, you know, I knew a lot of people from, from my corporate experience that were, were telling me that like, man, it's a black hole. You know, you just, you cannot get infrastructure built in rural areas because you don't have the talent, you don't have the money. And I said, "Ooh, that sounds like a r- that sounds like my kind of opportunity where- <laugh> Go, go to the, you know, off the beaten path, you know, kind of undiscovered country, but huge upside opportunity, you know, that had my name written all over it. So that's kind of how I ended up, uh, in, uh, Central Indiana. And it's, it's been beyond expectations. You know, Indiana is a really, really great place to live and to work and, you know, I'm never leaving. <laugh> 

Jessica Denson (05:11):
Yeah. It's, it really is a wonderful place. And you mentioned the Indy 500, you know, I'm in Louisville where the Kentucky Derby's about to happen in a few weeks at this recording. And, um, Indianapolis 500, I think is even more fun. <laugh> I'm not even a car person, but I think it's, it's just fun because it's more relaxed. You can take a cooler in with food and at the derby- Yeah. ... it's everything's very expensive and you have to wear hats and stuff. But anyway, uh, <laugh> yes, it's great. Indiana is a great place. So, uh, you kind of touched on your journey a little bit there. Uh, talk about, uh, what a day in the life is like for you in your current role in the rural to- at the rural to- tower cop- cooperative. Again, I'm, I'm getting in my own way with this one. <laugh> 

David Christophersen (05:54):
Yeah. So, uh, we ... J- just to give you a kind of a, a 50,000 foot view, we, we are a, a, what's called a agricultural marketing co-op. So we, we don't have, like, shared grain elevators or equipment that we share amongst our members. We're, we're a member oriented co-op that is in the business of marketing the land of our members to telecom sites. So we have basically two parties in our world. We have the landowners on one side, and we have the telecoms on the other. So my day is typically, uh, a typical day is taking a lot of inbound phone calls from farmland owners, typically from all over farm America, right, as far west as Missouri, uh, up to Michigan, New York, Kentucky, Louisiana, Illinois. So I'm getting calls about 40 to 50 a week, uh, from farmers who, because they've engaged with us through our various kind of marketing channels and networking channels are interested in learning more about how telecom leasing works.

(06:58)
It's a hot topic amongst farmers right now. And so I'm typically spending most of my day talking to farmers, explaining how these types of opportunities work, why tower leasing or fiber leasing, telecom infrastructure in general is a really nice option for a farmer that's looking for additional income. And then the other part of my day is typically calling on what I call our telecom partners, which are site acquisition firms, the big carrier grade telecoms, a lot of the kind of mid-market, smaller, including like the phone and electrical co-ops that are also now, you know, building more broadband infrastructure because at the end of the day, that's kind of what we do. We're like a matchmaker between the farmland owners, which we, we mostly focus on farmland owners because fundamentally they're business people, they're motivated to make money with their land. And that's why they're such great candidates for telecom projects.

(07:57)
And our, our goal is to help facilitate the kind of matching between the right landowner with the right location with that particular telecom, whether it be wireless, whether it be fiber, what have you, that needs sites that are kind of pre-vetted in rural areas that, that meet all of the criteria. It has to be an underserved area, right? It's got to be on the FCC list for, you know, funding availability. And so my day is typically juggling the two, the two parties kind of in our equation, the landowners who are the source of the property for which we're really kind of marketing to our tower par- and, and telecom partners and it's, it's a lot of work, right? We're getting a lot of demand right now from landowners who, you know, in, in the farming world, when word gets out, it spreads like wildfire, right? 

(08:52)
And we don't, we don't really have to market that hard because what we do is, is pretty self-evident to, to farmers. They, they c- just from our name, they go, "Oh, I see what you guys are. You're a co-op, which we like working with co-ops because we're farmers, but you're telling me you also handle this, this tower and telecom stuff on my property. Ooh, I wanna talk," right? So that's kind of a typical day and, um, it's exciting because it's to, to talk to farmers every day is one of my favorite things because they're, they're some of the most interesting business people I've ever talked to. 

Jessica Denson (09:27):
Yeah. Uh, really salt of the earth kind of people too You know, they're, they're working the land and they're, they're entrepreneurs and they're, you know, a lot of family stuff. There's, there's so many very cool things. I agree with you. Um, is there also a trust factor here that, you know, having some corporation or a company approach a farmer just out of nowhere is very different than having someone who understands the, the lifestyle that, that, uh, who you're dealing with. Is there like a trust element there that you provide? 

David Christophersen (09:55):
Oh yeah, it's huge. So this is a big reason why I think site acquisition in rural areas is often so inefficient is that ... And, and again, just I, I like to talk in the context of farmers and farmland owners because that's kind of our target audience. And they're, they're kind of a distinct group in rural America other than just kind of ordinary landowners, right? Farmers are business people, right? And they do business a certain way. They have partners that they do business with, they have ways of doing business that are old, that are traditional, that are deep seated, and, and what that means is it's difficult to go into the agriculture business as an outsider and try to do business with farmers if they don't know you, if they don't know where you're from or what you're about or, or why you're there, because farming at the end of the day, it, it's a pretty straightforward business, right?

(10:49)
You're, you're doing kind of the same thing every year, generally with the same people, with the same partners. So outsiders immediately coming into that world trying to sell something, for example, um, immediately are met with skepticism, especially amongst the older demographic of farmer, where, you know, they're used to working with, let's say, a half a dozen different co-ops because co-ops are kind of the core platforms that, that make agriculture possible. They're a special type of business in the agricultural world that's very well understood by farmers, trusted because they are essentially member-owned entities, right? The, the parties involved with the co-op are the actual farmers, right? So everybody has a stake in what's going on, right? So trust and credibility with farmland owners is a huge barrier, specifically to telecom companies who, for whatever reason, are not always, like, held in the highest esteem by farmers because they, they look, they're, they're looked at as kind of interlopers who want to come in and take over the community or take their land.

(12:01)
And this is a huge problem, right? And so

(12:04)
Co-ops are ... And one of the main reasons that I organized the rural tower co-op as a co-op with the permission of the Department of Agriculture in Indiana, because we, we have to get permission to operate as a co-op, is because there's an immediate credibility factor when you operate as an agricultural co-op in an agricultural state like Indiana. It's the, the name alone, and this is why you have to get permission from the state, conveys a certain degree of credibility to farmers, right? And farmers know almost immediately when you're called a co-op that you're there to help them run their farm, to add value to their farming business, and to make their life easier as it were, right? If you come in as kind of like, you know, AJAX Telecom Incorporated, "Hey, Mr. Landowner, we wanna talk to you, " almost immediately they'll, they're like, "I don't know you, I don't know who you are, I don't wanna do business with you, " right?

(13:00)
So co-ops really are kind of the main partner that, that farmers look to for any type of service or, or partnership that's gonna directly affect their farmland, right? And this is so critical that I think the reason we see such difficulty in acquiring rural sites, especially from the farmland community is the lack of credibility with companies that just don't understand the culture in agricultural America and don't understand that you're dealing with people who are fundamentally business people, which is great, but do business in a very different way than they do in corporate America, i- if that makes sense. 

Jessica Denson (13:43):
It does make sense. And in, in a co-op setting, just for the sake of my understanding and the understanding of audience who may not know much about the co-op world, it, it really is that what, what is good for one is good for all kind of thing, right? 

David Christophersen (13:59):
Yeah. So if you think about the reason you have co-ops is let's 

Jessica Denson (14:03):
Say 

David Christophersen (14:03):
You're a bunch of farmers in an, in an area and you need a million dollar piece of equipment, right? All of the farmers, each individual farmer's not gonna go out and buy a million dollar piece of equipment- <laugh> ... That he's only using two or three months out of the year. So what a co-op does is it allows those landowners to pool their resources, to buy one piece of equipment, they share the ownership of that equipment and, and the use of it, and it's a much more efficient way for farmers to pool resources to get services and equipment that would be cost prohibitive for them to do individually, right? So this goes back to ancient times, the concept of guilds, right? Where various groups would pool their resources and work together for the common benefit. And in, in an agricultural context, you know, co-ops are that kind of perfect hybrid between a, a business with capital stock and, and ownership of an asset, but at the same time that's not fundamentally driven by the profit motive, it's driven by the service of the members, right?

(15:06)
So it's, it's the benefits of a club- mm-hmm. ... and the benefits of a business kind of at the same time, which is unique to how agriculture works even in the modern world. It's a very unique way of doing business that makes perfect sense when you think about how farmers operate, right? 

Jessica Denson (15:25):
Yeah, it's, I think it's very interesting. Thanks for explaining that a little further. Yeah. Uh, a lot of bead planning focuses on the ISPs, states, small towns, perhaps communities, but not always the landowners who are actually hosting the infrastructure. From your perspective, where does landowner engagement fall short today, especially in rural America? 

David Christophersen (15:46):
Yeah, it's a great question because it's such a huge issue is that, you know, when, when, uh, look at BEAD, for example, which, you know, it is gotten complicated since it started. Uh, but all, all, all rural broadband projects kind of go through this process where, you know, the ISPs do capacity plans and they, you know, the, there might be a, a study done with a, if it's a Native American, uh, location, you know, tribal planning and consultation, all of these various elements go into broadband planning and deployment. And the one party that's left out typically of those conversations is one of the critical parties, which is the private landowner who often will be asked to host that particular infrastructure for long, for long-term lease. The, they're, the, the landowners themselves are kind of an afterthought. They're almost always left out of the conversation. Now, there's a reason for that.

(16:47)
The, the answer is it's the old concentrated benefits diffuse costs problem is, okay, how do you communicate with large numbers of landowners who are gonna be necessary to this rural broadband project when they may not even know why they should care or they may not even know what this is all about or how it benefits them. The people in the deployment business, even the, the state broadband offices, they're the, they're the guys concentrated on the deployment. The landowners are that scattered, diffuse audience out there that doesn't have kind of a central voice, right? The landowners are kind of always the redheaded stepchild in, in this, in this process. Yeah. And that's, that's another motivation for us at Rural Tower Co-op is to be a conduit of information because in our model, we're not doing the scattergun approach where we're just blasting information out and hoping to get people to call us.

(17:44)
We're, we're working, doing what we do to attract motivated landowners who understand the opportunity and want to lease their property, right? And so if we're aggregating motivated landowners that want to participate in these broadband projects, then we can be a conduit to get that information from ... We, we can be the conduit from the large planning organizations doing the broadband planning to the landowners that are, that are our best partners to deploy that infrastructure, right? We can be a conduit of information that's much more efficient because remember, our members are the motivated landowner. They're not just random landowners that don't really understand what's going on here. They're the ones who are calling us saying, "I want in. I want a lease on my property because I want the income and the enhanced broadband." And so that's kind of a unique angle to this that I think is unique for what we're doing, which is we're trying to flip the, the landowner piece of this on its head from trying to find landowners through kind of a scattergun approach that want to get infrastructure or, or willing to lease property to know we will bring you to the telecom industry a, an, a database of landowners that are motivated to lease to you today, right?

(19:04)
And that's, I think, a big change we can bring here between the ISPs, between the state broadband offices, and the landowners in that state that are most likely to be the ones to want to participate in a broadband project. 

Jessica Denson (19:19):
And that's critical when, when you suggest that your work suggests that traditional, like a tradi- more traditional approach, not using the co-op idea or this idea that you're talking about, that these site a- site acquisition approaches really fail about 95% of the time in rural areas. Um, why is that number so high? Is it just because people don't ... It's just like you said, they don't, they're not approaching it the right way and so then you're, then you're adding all this time to your timelines and your planning. Is it, is it just as simple as the approach? 

David Christophersen (19:53):
Well, it's, it's a little bit more complicated that, but one of the critical issues is exactly as you said, is that traditional telecom acquisition, site acquisition is really good in rural, I mean, uh, suburban and urban areas, right? So acquiring sites in relatively suburban, uh, and the kind of transition areas between suburban and urban, they, they've got that down to a science, right? They use AI nowadays, they use data analytics, they can find the right site, get to the landowner. That part of site acquisition, I would say, works well. Here, here's the challenge, right? We got all this new, uh, investment going into rural broadband, which has forced a lot of the traditional site acquisition business to have to go after people in rural areas, right, looking for, for land leases, right? And- 

Jessica Denson (20:46):
Mm-hmm. 

David Christophersen (20:47):
... the traditional site acquisition model really isn't effective in rural areas for kind of what we talked about earlier, which is this trust factor, right? You know, you start get ... And if you talk to farmers that ma- we have, uh, many members in our co-op currently that have, that have towers on their property, um, that have been solicited by site acquisition firms and big telecom companies. And I'd say almost nine out of 10 say when they got the mailing or the guy knocked on their door, the, the people knocking on their door didn't make it clear why they were there, what the opportunity was. They were just kind of shoving an agreement in their face and saying, "Hey, sign this and we'll pay you, and we're gonna drop this thing on your, on your, uh, on your property and it's gonna be here for the next 30 years." And the landowner was like, "I don't know what this is and I don't understand it well enough to sign a 30 year lease." So- 

Jessica Denson (21:34):
Yeah. 

David Christophersen (21:35):
... um, again, back to the, the trust and credibility issue in rural America is very different than what you see in suburban and urban. And so, um, I think this, and exacerbating this problem is now the BEAD, for example, with the timelines for deployment, there's a huge amount of pressure now to do rural site acquisition to meet all these bead targets. And if it's not BEAD, it's USDA Reconnect, it's, it's Universal Service Fund, it's, uh, a- any of the other state or federal subsidy programs that are trying to drive investment in rural broadband, you're still running up against the same problem, which is you want, you, what you really wanna do is get to farmers and farmland owners, not just ordinary rural landowners, because again, farmers are business people, they're gonna know how to, this type of business. The challenge is, is they just won't trust you when you show up and say, "Hey, I, I wanna put some infrastructure on your property." They're, they, I think the best way to say it is the farmer wants to be an active participant in how this works, and if you allow him to be an active participant in how the telecom deployment process works, you're gonna have a much better experience than just trying to randomly knock on doors, hoping that maybe one out of 10 landowners might say yes because at the scale that like be, just beat alone when you talk about the thousands of sites that are, that are apparently have been scheduled to be built under the BEAD program, a, a lot of which I don't think are being built and a lot of being are defaulted on, I think a big, a big reason for that is the guys that got these bead contracts, these telecoms that got these bead contracts to build in rural areas, way underestimated how difficult it is to scale up site acquisition in rural areas because you're dealing with a very different culture, you're dealing with a very different kind of mindset, plus you're dealing with this huge demographic shift that's underway where the older baby boomer farmland owners are starting to pass on the family farms to younger generations and that adds a whole nother complex piece here about, you know, whereas the older generations might not have been that enthusiastic about broadband, boy, the younger generations inheriting the farm sure are. <laugh>

(23:52)
Yeah. It's a must have, you 

Jessica Denson (23:54):
Know? Yeah, which really brings me to our next point is that our discussion point is that, as you said, we're, we're seeing a huge, we're seeing generational transfer of farmland in the US history. It's one of the largest that we've ever seen. And- Yep. ... younger farmers consistently cite connectivity as a deciding factor if they're gonna continue the farm, family farm and stay in agriculture. So from what you're seeing, how does broadband access actually influence farm succession, rural retention, and why does connectivity matter on the farm beyond just keeping people there, but also just in general and how fu- farming works? 

David Christophersen (24:33):
Yeah, this is a huge, huge issue that's not getting, I think, the national, uh, press that it should because, um, there was a recent, uh, study done by FarmWorld, uh, which is one of the a- big agricultural newspapers that says about 68% of farmers with children have no one in the family that wants to take over the farm. 68%, that's huge. And the main reason cited is the next generation says l- farm life is way too disconnected and I'm not gonna go live on the family farm where I can't get on the internet or work my remote job, right? And so I think not only are we seeing that one of the biggest transfers of farmland in American history, we're gonna see one of the biggest, um, exits of families from a long-term family farm simply because the younger generations have to have high ... It's, it's not optional anymore.

(25:31)
Um, we live in a world, obviously, in the 21st century where you gotta be online, you gotta have excellent 5G phone service, you gotta have some high speed broadband option so that you can at the very least watch Netflix, do video conferencing, do Zoom meetings. And so as these younger generations are taking over family farms, if, if they're already living somewhere else because they left the family farm when they were younger, because they just, they wanted to live in a suburb that had good infrastructure, to go back to the family farm and raise their kids, which they would love to do because it's a great lifestyle on the farm, the, the reality is young couples are not gonna go back to a farm to raise their family if there's no broadband. It's just a reality, right? And so I, I think we are gonna see kind of a bifurcation of how rural, rural broadband is deployed.

(26:22)
It's, it's gonna be mostly focused around farm areas because it's so critical that farms have connectivity for the future. And I think part of the challenge with funding rural broadband, whether it be state or federal programs helping to subsidize the build out, the reality is agriculture is a core industry in America that is absolutely going in the direction of automation, AI, robotics, and that's not gonna work if we don't have good broadband- 

Jessica Denson (26:57):
Mm-hmm. 

David Christophersen (26:59):
... covering the majority of our farmland. And so, um, we've got a generational issue combined with a technological and broadband access issue all coming to head at the same time. And, you know, I, I, this is why I do think we're gonna get rural broadband in America. It's probably gonna be mostly focused on our farm areas and the whole data center issue is actually, might end up helping that happen rather than, uh, be resisted as heavily as it is currently. I think there, this is gonna happen because farming will require it, I guess is the bottom line. 

Jessica Denson (27:40):
It's interesting that you bring up the, the data center thing. You know, there was a, a huge national story about a farmer in Kentucky who turned down one of the data centers- Yeah. ... huge amount of money, uh, because it's her family land. Um, and there's some mistrust in that space as well. Uh, are you talking to any groups regarding that? 

David Christophersen (28:01):
Uh, in terms of farmland owners, I ask almost every farmland owner that, that I'm talking to, like, what is your position on data centers on your property? I'd say right now, the, the older demographic of farmland owner is kind of, um, against it. It, it sounds like it's an attack on farmland, right? Mm-hmm. The younger demographic is looking at the amount of money that's potentially in play and going, "You know, that's a lot of money." <laugh> Um, and so this is a cultural issue in f- in agricultural America. The, the data center thing is very new. Mm-hmm. I think people are still trying to digest, like, what this means. People have already seen that, or, or the, the kind of narrative now is you get a data center in your area, your power prices are gonna quadruple, your water prices will triple, um, the, it's noisy and it's, it's overall gonna ruin your community.

(28:56)
Is that entirely true? I don't think so, but, uh, you know, I don't have one of these data centers in my community. And I get people don't like the idea of a big company like Amazon coming into your neighborhood and saying, "We're gonna just drop this giant data center in the middle of a, a rural area and tap into your power grid and, oh, by the way, everybody else is gonna pay higher power prices." Um, however, we're, we're only in the early days of this data center revolution. And I think the nature of how data centers are gonna be built in rural areas is going to be refined and changed to be, uh, I think a little bit more palatable. That will also potentially help fund rural broadband because, you know, I think the reality is you're gonna see smaller data centers built perhaps in, uh, a wider dispersion.

(29:49)
Um, you're not gonna see one big data center. You'll see smaller data centers, they'll probably also be in agricultural areas, um, and those will be contingent upon, you know, funding expanded broadband in and around the farm property, again, because modern 21st century agriculture is going in the direction of autonomous farm equipment, AI driven. And so I, I can see a convergence in the coming years of how the data center and rural broadband issue finds a way to resolve itself so that farmers will benefit from data centers and broadband expansion without it being so onerous that, uh, you know, communities will just generally reject data centers out of hand. But I mean, that's my opinion, but- mm-hmm. ... again, I think farming in America is so critical, especially if you look at the current situation in the global markets with energy and fertilizer prices right now, we're looking at major disruptions in, in the global agricultural system such that we're gonna need to start finding efficiencies in how we do agriculture in the United States that will probably only be possible through things like robotics and AI and other new technology because the, the world is changing very rapidly now and I don't see it going back to the way it was anytime soon. <laugh> 

Jessica Denson (31:12):
Yeah. And you also have to think about, you know, this, in this rural area, people move to rural areas or live in rural areas partly because they want that connection to nature and, you know, the land and that kind of thing. Um, one quick question before, uh, we move on. Um, I didn't ask you, which I neglected to, and I should have, it, what type of infrastructure are you talking about with these farmers? Is it anything from fiber builds, like where they actually dig up some of the land to wireless structures, you know, in the sky, you know, high up on, uh, uh, beams or, or what is it that, is it all, everything's on the table depending on who, who you're talking to? 

David Christophersen (31:54):
Yeah. So farmers really like ... The word's out now, and farmers really like the idea of wireless towers, right? Mm-hmm. Because

(32:03)
You, you carve out a tiny little piece, maybe a 20 foot by 20 foot, 100 foot by 100 foot square on a 300 acre property. The great thing about towers is whether it's a 5G or fixed wireless tower, whether it's mounting a fixed wireless system on a grain elevator, these have minimal impact to the farm. You can keep farming the way you always did, but now you've just, this tiny little piece of your property, you've just dropped a, what we call mailbox money, passive income scenario for the landowner. He's now getting paid every month for the next 30 years, in some cases, a substantial amount of money, um, and he's given up a tiny, tiny fraction of his property and it's usually on a part of the property that he doesn't see or doesn't pass. This is very motivating to a farmers. Now, again, specifically farmers see this very differently than, let's say, a guy who's got like a quarter of an acre, he's living out in a rural area, that's a different audience.

(33:01)
Our audience of farmers, they love this idea, right? Because again, minimal impact to the farm, very nice source of income. So that's, that's the big carrier grade towers, the multi-tenant towers from, you know, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, which tend to pay very well when you get one of those on your property. The fixed wireless, which is even more popular nowadays in rural areas because it's a, a cheaper way to deploy, uh, in very wide kind of open rural areas. Fiber also, we talk with landowners about fiber. One of the challen- and, and fiber absolutely has a significant role to play in farm. Here's the challenge, a lot of the farmland, uh, that our members, uh, have in our co-op are just raw plots of farmland. There's no buildings, nobody lives on the farm. So bringing fiber to kind of just a raw plot of farmland, uh, doesn't necessarily help, right?

(34:01)
Mm-hmm. You drop a wireless tower where 20 farms now are instantly accessible to high speed internet from that one tower, you've just solved the problem of broadband, even in raw farmland, where that, that broadband, at least for phone service, is critical because when, when the guys are on the farm, when they're working on the farm, when they're running the combine, they gotta have good phone service, gotta be able to text, gotta be able to potentially do FaceTime. Um, and wireless, I, I, my opinion is, and I'm hearing this more and more from farmers is, is a wireless solution in, in farming scenarios probably works better, but fiber, if you've got, um, like we have a lot of, uh, dairy and, uh, cattle, uh, operations in our co-op, they have a lot of facilities. They've got barns, they've got grain elevators, they've got various infrastructure. In those kind of sites, bringing fiber to a site like that could be really useful because they can now hook a lot of the, uh, technology that's in these farms into a fiber-based solution, and that's wonderful.

(35:13)
So at the end of the day, it's gonna definitely be a mix of fiber and wireless, both of 5G, 5G and fixed wireless. But as it, again, back to the fact that autonomous farm equipment, um, remote telemetry, drones, which we're seeing more and more in farm country as spraying and monitoring technology, all of that stuff generally works over wireless. And so I think the bias on, in farming areas is gonna be more towards wireless solutions, but definitely we're gonna have hubs and other cross connects that'll be fiber. And I, I leave that to the engineers. They, they know way better than I on the telecom side, but just, I, I will say from the, from the landowner side, it's such an easy sell. It's, it's a no-brainer to a farmer to say, you drop a tower on your property, you carve out a tiny little plot for that and, and you get a 30 year lease and you're getting paid for the next 30 years.

(36:08)
It takes all of about five minutes to sell a farmer on that concept. He gets it, he loves it, and the answer is usually, "All right, I wanna join the co-op. When can I get my tower?" <laugh> <laugh> 

Jessica Denson (36:21):
Um, for you, what is something that, um, ISP, state broadband offices ... Uh, I mean, I guess let me, let me digress a little bit. You're not just in Indiana, you're in multiple states, correct? 

David Christophersen (36:34):
So we have members in about 11 states. Uh, we have just shy of about 9,000 acres in 11 states, uh, in our, currently in our inventory. So we do, if ... We're based in Indiana. We are an Indiana, uh, approved co-op, but we're a marketing co-op. So we work with landowners throughout the entire United States who want, you know, these types of telecom opportunities. We're not limited just to the state of Indiana. 

Jessica Denson (37:01):
Gotcha. So, um, for people to, that, that are interested, I'm gonna put a link, uh, to RTC, which is easier to say to rural tower cooperative, but I did it <laugh>. There you go. Um, and the description of this podcast. So, um, you're open for even states that you're not in yet that to maybe expanding and working with state broadband offices, I take it, ISPs, whoever is looking for this? 

David Christophersen (37:23):
Yeah, again, so we, we've got, on the landowner side, w- we've got plenty of inbound, um, landowners calling and joining every week. The real challenge we're having right now is on the telecom side, we, we have current telecom partners that we already work with. We're looking for more. We're, we're looking for, you know, phone and electric co-ops all over the country that are doing broadband projects, right? Anybody out there in the telecom world that is trying to do rural broadband projects, we wanna be on your radar. We, we wanna be a marketplace where the telecoms who need great sites that are pre-vetted can come and find those sites quickly and efficiently, and, and we wanna be the facilitator that makes those connections happen quickly and efficiently. Um, and so on the telecom side, we want everybody out there that's doing broadband projects that requires, like, private land in rural areas, specifically in underserved or bead zones- 

Jessica Denson (38:29):
Mm-hmm. 

David Christophersen (38:30):
... call us, we wanna work with you, we wanna be a partner to help facilitate that. 

Jessica Denson (38:35):
Um, I can't keep you all day. I actually have another podcast coming up in about 20, 30 minutes, but, um, I, I just have two more questions. One is, where do you want things to be in the rural broadband landscape where, in your perfect role the next 10, five, or five to 10 years? 

David Christophersen (38:53):
Yeah. Um, I, I would like to see this process eventually get kind of boiled down to an app on your phone, right? Like, if you're a landowner, um, and you've heard about the fact that you could get a telecom lease on your property, you download an app, you register, the GPS logs your site, you go into the database, and now on the telecom side, they're getting alerts or they're going in their app and they're seeing in zip codes or states where they need sites, boom. Everything's done on an app. It's efficient, it's seamless. Um, that's where I think this is going. I think that's where we need to be. You know, this, this process of site acquisition in rural America could be as efficient as shopping on Amazon. You go, you shop what you want, you put it in the shopping cart, you hit checkout.

(39:45)
It's gonna be that efficient. We, we're hoping that, that RTC can be the company that makes it that efficient, but we need to get to that point over the next couple years because, like I said, w- we've gotta get broadband to our farm country in this, in this United States of America because farming is way too critical and the world is changing way too quickly to, to fall behind on that, right? So I, I wanna get this down to what's literally like shopping on Amazon. When you need a mo- when you need a motivated landowner in a, in a zone where you need to build, you go on an app, you shop, you click a button, boom, it's done, right? We're, that we're gonna get there and the sooner the better. 

Jessica Denson (40:25):
Yeah. Well, I think all of us at Connect Nation would echo that, how the importance of rural connectivity. It's so critical for farming, for small communities, small town America. You know, there's millions and millions and millions of people affected by that. Um- Correct. ... before we close, what's the one key takeaway you want listeners to walk away with when it comes to rural cooperatives and broadband deployment, specifically with RTC, Rural Tower Cooperative? <laugh> 

David Christophersen (40:52):
Yeah. So just on the, uh, I'd say for landowners that might be interested in participating, um, reach out to us. Um, if you, specifically if you are a farmland owner, um, please reach out to us. We'll, we'll talk to you, explain to you how this all works. I, I'm sure you'll, you'll have a great experience there. If you're a telecom company, if you're a state broadband office, um, I'd also offer, please reach out to us, get on our radar, let, let's have a conversation. Um, we're, we're expanding rapidly. We're, we're, we're only about a year and a half old, uh, since we started. So we are growing very rapidly. And just from what I'm seeing in the news every day, state broadband offices and a lot of these telecom companies that are now under tremendous pressure to get these build outs done, you're gonna need help.

(41:41)
You're gonna need a marketplace where you can facilitate site acquisition with the right kind of landowners at the right time. So I think we are in a tremendously exciting time for rural broadband. I think it's messy right now. It's a little chaotic. Uh, that's good. <laugh> I think that's a good thing. Um, and we are gonna figure out how to get broadband into rural America because we have to. Um, and so the more, the more I can reach out to people listening to this podcast, uh, that are interested in learning more about how we work at Rural Tower Cooperative as well as what the opportunities may be for working with us, give us a call, reach out, we'd love to talk. 

Jessica Denson (42:24):
Yeah. And I'll cl- again, I'll include links to RTC and related resources and description of this podcast. So David, thank you so much for your time. I love what you guys are doing. Please keep us updated. I'd love to do a follow-up down the road, see where you guys are at, how things are going in the next five, six months or so or next year. Um, whenever you have a moment again, maybe next planning season <laugh> if you have a break. <laugh> Thank you so much. 

David Christophersen (42:51):
Thank you so much, Jessica. Have a great day. 

Jessica Denson (42:53):
You too. Again, we've been talking with David Christopherson, who is the general manager for the Rural Tower C- Cooperative, also called RTC. I'll include links to RTC and related resources in the description of this podcast. I'm Jessica Denson, and this is Connect Nation. If you like our show and wanna know more about us, head to connectednation.org or find the latest episodes on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Pandora, or Spotify.