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

human-centered
How Human-Centered Design Led to a Startup Accelerator for Education: A Conversation with Transcend Network’s Co-founder Michael Narea
June 20, 2025

The convergence of human-centered design and education innovation is reshaping how edtech ventures emerge and scale. As AI enables hyper-efficiency and bootstrapped entrepreneurship becomes more viable, the real differentiator is empathy—founders who listen deeply to users before building solutions. A McKinsey study of 300 public companies found that design-led organizations significantly outperformed their peers, with…

Read More
care navigation
AI-Powered Care Navigation Reduces Healthcare Spend and Improves Patient Access
June 20, 2025

The U.S. healthcare system is strained by rising costs, uneven quality, and fragmented care navigation. Employers are bearing the brunt, spending more without always securing better care for their teams. According to the RAND Corporation, one effective strategy is to “change their network and benefit designs to encourage patients to use lower‑priced, higher‑value providers…

Read More
edge computing
Building the Wireless Future: Low-Power IoT, Edge Computing, and the End of the Gs
June 19, 2025

As the global race to 6G heats up, telecom providers, governments, and tech companies are investing billions to advance the next generation of hyperconnected infrastructure. European operators urge regulators to release more spectrum to stay competitive, while U.S. programs like the USDA’s ReConnect have funneled over $1 billion into rural fiber backhaul. Meanwhile, companies like…

Read More
healthcare operations
Healthcare Operations Improve with AI That Unites Data, Automation, and Ethics
June 18, 2025

Generative AI has captured the public imagination, but its most transformative use cases may lie far from flashy consumer tools. In healthcare operations, where complexity, inefficiency, and fragmentation remain persistent challenges, AI is now driving measurable improvements. Research suggests AI-enabled healthcare systems could cut administrative costs by up to $360 billion in the U.S. alone….

Read More