It’s an Exciting Moment for Telecommunication Infrastructure Growth


It’s an exciting moment for the growth of telecommunication infrastructure, especially in places that aren’t New York City or Los Angeles.

While the “big three” companies will continue to fight each other in urban markets, rolling out things like 5G and battling for the best densification, there’s enormous space for the hundreds of smaller companies who are looking to serve small towns and rural environments, which became even more attractive in 2020.

“The new race is the rural race. That’s where the Tier 2s, the Tier 3s, the munis, the co-ops and the electric utilities are really playing a role,” said Tom Counts, CEO of 3-GIS. “The electric utilities have a number of factors pushing them. They’ve seen declining revenue for the last decade. They’ve been looking at, ‘How do I do revenue replacement?’ But at the same time, boom, you’ve got (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund) funding that’s come out and COVID hitting everyone, and people have run to the woods. They’re sheltering in place, working from home and the race to be able to successfully allow them to do that is on, and it is on big time.

“With SSP, who has a fantastic reputation and position all across the utility space, we are finally going to be well-prepared to answer that call.”

SSP had long been hoping to work with a company like 3-GIS, though CEO Skye Perry joked that Counts at first ignored his calls.

“As we’ve grown we were primarily a service provider,” Perry said. “What we saw when we looked at 3-GIS is they come from the opposite direction as far as product-first. They’re a completely product-oriented business. They certainly do services, too, with their products, but they’ve really focused on not getting into the customization business, which is a tremendous move for a product provider.

“As we bring these (organizations) together with their complementary backgrounds and offering, as I go through and sort of articulate the synergistic opportunities between us, that probably gets me just as excited as anything. We do different things, but when we bring it together, we’re going to do all of it a whole lot better.”

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Rothman Index
The Origin Story of the Rothman Index – Episode 5
January 8, 2026

Hospitals collect enormous amounts of clinical data, yet preventable patient decline remains a persistent challenge. Over the past two decades, hospitals have invested heavily in early warning scores and rapid response infrastructure, but translating data into timely, meaningful action has proven difficult. As clinicians contend with alert fatigue and increasing documentation burden, a more…

Read More
Rothman Index
My Mother and the Story of the Genesis of the Rothman Index – Episode 4
January 8, 2026

Healthcare generates enormous volumes of clinical data, yet making sense of that information in real time remains a challenge. Subtle changes in vitals, labs, and nursing assessments often precede serious events, but when that information is fragmented across the medical record, emerging risks can go unnoticed. The central challenge facing hospitals today is not…

Read More
home
Delivering Moments That Matter: The Art of Joy, Memory, and Meaning at Anthropologie Home
January 8, 2026

These days, ‘home’ means more than just four walls. It’s where people reset, gather, and express who they are—raising the bar for what they expect from the brands that help shape those spaces. Consumers are no longer just buying décor—they’re investing in meaning, memory, and moments that last. Research continues to show that people…

Read More
Texas energy
Small Margins, Big Risks: How Fraud Hurts Texas Energy Retailers
January 6, 2026

Fraud has quietly become one of the most existential threats in Texas’s deregulated retail electricity market—because the business runs on razor-thin margins and delayed payment. Under the non-POR system overseen by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), retail energy providers assume the full risk of nonpayment. With profit margins often measured in just a…

Read More