Coming out of the mush

Rutherford County, and the country, are slogging through the transition to a new economy. It's like mush in the morning, bland, sticky and you think you'll never get through it.
Broadband development is stuck in the mush, too, in our case, the hurdles to overcome are cost, distance and that business acronym that underlies everything, ROI.
Return on investment. Quarterly financials. Shareholders. These are hallmarks of our economic system but also get in the way of long-term development. When businesses invest, they want to see their money coming back quickly. Investors like meaty quarterly financials. It means they will keep their investments right where they are ... earning money.
But what we need right now is someone, or a bunch of someones, with money to take a risk and find a way to get broadband, true broadband, to the sometimes sparsely populated and topographically challenged regions of Rutherford County.
AT&T won't do it until it will immediately begin to pay off. The county has had the good fortune of a large grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation that resulted in every public school in the county equipped with true broadband, and now emergency responders -- fire departments, rescue squads -- are also being connected and have their own, secure communication network.
That's a great start. But we need fiber everywhere.
Fiber is the path of opportunity. The Internet is only limited by people's imaginations.
Foothills Connect is showing the way with its innovative FarmFresh initiative.
The plan is to recruit a private business to use the fiber connections at the various government facilities and schools to offer a wireless option to all the homes in the county.
Why should a student whose parents chose a remote location for the family home have less opportunity than a student who lives in, say, Forest City. He or she should not experience that deprivation.
Broadband is a bridge over the mush. It's a bridge to new opportunity. It's a bridge that needs to be built in Rutherford County.