When the opportunity to edit The Independent came up at the beginning of the year, I jumped at it. In the 15 years that I’ve been reporting on the telecom industry, one of my favorite focus areas—or what journalists call “beats”--has always been the independent telcos.

When policy makers aimed to jumpstart local competition through the Telecom Act 12 years ago, few predicted the dramatic boom and bust that would follow—although in hindsight, we realized that over-construction and unrealistic payback timetables would doom many of the new companies that arrived on the scene. But while scores of these companies crashed and burned, there were also some ironic winners—incumbent rural carriers that took the opportunity to expand their service areas into neighboring communities that often were under-served by the telecom giants. And because the incumbents-turned-CLECs set realistic goals for investment and return and were able to leverage their strong track record and investment in their own community, they succeeded.

Now that the telecom industry has recovered, independents continue to be one of its strongest forces, often outpacing the telco giants in deploying advanced video and data services. And, in rural markets in particular, modern communications infrastructure can have a tremendous impact on the overall prosperity and strength of a community.

In Horry County, South Carolina, Horry Telephone Cooperative has helped improve the quality of life for existing residents and attract retirees from metro areas by deploying infrastructure to support advanced telemedicine applications. In northwest Kansas, the competitive carrier arm of Rural Telephone Service helped keep jobs in the community by deploying broadband in Osborne, thereby preventing an agricultural company from relocating. And in Stuttgart, Arkansas--a farming community also known as the duck hunting capital of the world--broadband connectivity helped fuel the success of Mack’s Prairie Wings, a hardware store that transformed itself into a successful catalog and on-line retailer.

Connect Arkansas--a non-profit organization that has independent telcos and other private as well as public organizations among its member--aims to encourage further broadband deployment in that state. [] The group estimates that more than 8000 jobs could be created in that state alone if advanced broadband infrastructure was more widely deployed—and similar initiatives in other states aim for equally impressive results.

Getting broadband to unserved areas clearly could have a big payoff, and independents certainly view it as a top priority. But as broadband penetration rises, the remaining unserved areas are some of the most difficult to address. And that’s just one of many challenges that independent telcos face.

Traditionally, many of them have relied on funding from the Universal Service program but, as we report, that funding is now threatened. Consolidation among independents also is bringing changes—good and bad—to the market. And despite the progress that independents have made in deploying broadband throughout a large part of their serving area, they can’t become complacent, as advanced applications drive the need for even higher bandwidth.

I look forward to bringing you coverage of these important issues and others. It will be great to reconnect with those that I’ve worked with before and also to make new acquaintances. And I’m particularly interested in hearing your own stories about how telecom can have a positive impact on a community. Please send them to me, along with other feedback and story ideas, at joanengebretson@cs.com.