Who are the Broadband Guys?
Two telecom experts travel North America to help bring internet to all.
Barry Walton and Darin Howe have been documenting their efforts to help bring broadband to rural areas throughout North America.
Grasses bow gently to a prairie breeze as Barry Walton and Darin Howe set up a tripod in the middle of an expansive field. Bison graze in the distance.
For the past year, Walton and Howe have been documenting and sharing their adventures in rural fiber deployment. They are experts for Corning, working side by side with network providers to bring high-speed internet to people in hard-to-reach locations – and reveal how Corning’s unique solutions can help providers overcome even the most difficult network deployment challenges.
This week they’re setting up in remote western Canada.
Some people might call an area like this the “middle of nowhere.” Others call it home. And while those people may live hundreds of miles away from the nearest city, they are equally in need of high-speed internet. The facts don’t lie: A 2024 study found that rural counties with high adoption rates for fiber broadband saw 213% higher business growth, 44% higher GDP growth, and 18% higher per capita income growth. But bringing high-speed internet to rural homes comes with challenges.
Walton hits the record button.
“Hey, everybody. It’s the Broadband Guys,” Howe starts the video.
Walton and Howe work for Corning Optical Communications, collaborating with telecom customers big and small to provide rural areas with internet via low-loss optical fiber, which Corning invented in 1970. Walton and Howe never thought they’d be influencers, but their videos, originally meant for customers, have gained them a social media following as “The Broadband Guys.”
“Our primary focus is to connect the unconnected and help overcome the challenges that come with that,” Howe says, reflecting on a year of social media videos. “In our market, everyone just wants to help each other. Our videos say, ‘Hey, we’re out here, too,’ and we’re sharing what works.”
This prairie in Vonda, Saskatchewan, is only one of the many remote locations internet service providers are trying to reach with the assistance of the Broadband Guys.
The challenges of rural broadband deployment
Out in the Canadian prairies, or rolling hills of Tennessee, or wherever the Broadband Guys are working next, the challenges for fiber deployment can be unique to the area, but most are universal: “Speed, cost, and ability to maintain the network,” Walton says.
Fiber broadband companies – large nationwide services and small local businesses with a few thousand subscribers – must figure out how to run miles of fiber cables to homes, either underground or on poles. They must train skilled technicians and deploy them to remote areas. They must have the right equipment and products on hand. The Broadband Guys help them work through those logistical challenges to find solutions.
“Where we were in Saskatchewan, there's a couple hundred homes,” Walton says. “Like, it's hours away to have a technician. So, we trialed new evolutions of our Evolv® terminals and Pushlok® Connector Technology, which would be a lot easier to maintain. You wouldn’t need a specialized technician in a bucket truck to back up, do a repair. Instead, you can use the regular technician.”
Besides innovating new connectivity solutions, Walton says Corning’s prowess in the industry comes from its willingness to get out in the field and think like a network provider. Walton and Howe have been helping Corning do this for a shared 24 years, but both have decades of industry experience under their belts.
“We're always thinking about the operational cost for our customers,” Walton continues. “In these rural areas, things happen that you can't control. Someone will dig up something. Someone will tear something down. Those are the things that you start thinking about from a resilience side of things.”
Everyone deserves internet access
The work is worthwhile, Walton and Howe say, even if operators may have to travel to remote locations just to service a few hundred homes.
“If you don't have fiber broadband services at your home, you may miss out on basic things from an economic opportunity standpoint,” Howe says. “The internet gives you access to telehealth, learning, banking, entrepreneurship. And you can clearly connect with friends and family around the world.”
The United States government supported that belief in bringing internet to more people in more places with the passage of the bipartisan Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which allocates $42.5 billion in funding for broadband deployment.
With the ascent of artificial intelligence, the potential for fiber-driven networks is even stronger, the Broadband Guys say. Corning’s connectivity offerings continue to evolve with that need.
“The fiber Corning invented 50 years ago? We're not done yet,” Howe says. “We're still trying to get it out there to the whole world and it is still a life-changing innovation when you get it to somebody's home. I mean, it's an instant improvement.”
Walton and Howe work with customers in the air and on the ground.
Out in the field
It’s another sunny, albeit windy, day for Walton and Howe’s adventures, and this time they’re on an island in Washington state. As they look around, they see large trees and powerline damage caused by storms. They take note of the landscape and compile a list of recommendations for the internet service provider. They advise to bury cables and suggest products that would make the best use of technicians’ time traveling by boat to the remote island. But they say the challenges are worth it to get fiber to the people who need it.
So, where should the Broadband Guys go next?
Network professionals have to install and maintain fiber cables in order to deliver high-speed internet to customers.