Dave Andersen

Expanding broadband isn’t just about laying more fiber. It’s about finding practical ways to reach the rugged, rural, and hard-to-serve places where traditional infrastructure projects are slow or cost-prohibitive. That challenge is at the heart of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, which is fueling one of the largest broadband infrastructure efforts in U.S. history.

Network outages used to be contained problems—a cell tower lost power, customers in that area lost service, and technicians restored connectivity within hours. The digital environment has since changed dramatically, with failures now spreading quickly across interconnected systems that society depends on. The root cause lies in digital transformation itself. Organizations have gained tremendous capabilities through cloud services, managed providers, and interconnected networks, but they’ve also created new vulnerabilities.