What do Drew Brees, the World Series, and Servato all have in common?... We all broke records in the month of October!

Drew Brees broke the all-time passing yards record, surpassing 50,000 yards and eclipsing Peyton Manning.  The Red Sox and Dodgers engaged in the longest World Series game ever at 18 innings (7 hours and 20 minutes!) in the seven-game series. And last but not least, Servato surpassed the 100 Million operating hour mark for systems in the field and is now gathering more than 250,000 new battery test data points every week into Servato's ActiView® data platform.

October was a busy month for the Servato team. MATSS in Kansas City, MO, KTA-TTA in Bowling Green, KY, and SCTE Cable Tec Expo in Atlanta, GA make up the short list of association shows we participated in. Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida panhandle much as Hurricane Florence did to the Carolinas in September. An historically warm month across the United States created ideal conditions for more storm systems.  But while 2018 has produced severe weather and tremendous damage, it has not yet been as severe as 2017 in terms of total financial impact (recall Harvey and Maria). Do you want to learn more about how we prepare providers backup power for ice storms, tornadoes, and more?

FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel and FCC Chairman Pai disagree on many issues facing the telecom industry, but they do agree on one major issue: the need for more and better rural broadband.  In a recent interview, Chairman Pai proposed a holistic approach to gathering information on broadband availability by calling on every American to report their connectivity. While broadband maps are notoriously inaccurate with regards to who really has broadband and at what speeds, both commissioners recognize that solving this problem starts with truly realizing the depth of it. Past data on served populations used spooky parameters that would cause even Michael Myers to pause for a second to think, what? For example, as long as one person in a census block responded "Yes" to service then it was marked as a served area... obviously not representative of the true population.

Maybe a good starting point would be to take a closer look at the 1st Ever Presidential Wireless Alert. This test communicated with over 225 million wireless devices, an enormous feat for FEMA's emergency response system.  While the alert did not test broadband availability, it did test wireless connectivity for SMS and therefore could be helpful in mapping wireless connectivity.  Anyone who received the alert theoretically has SMS access at the place where they received it.  A broadband test could be developed using similar infrastructure to send a bigger file, then request confirmation from recipients to indicate that they had sufficient download speeds to receive the file.  Perhaps an approach like this could serve as baseline data for quickly mapping rural broadband access.

Last month we spoke about the Rural Utilities Service approved plan for $600 million to improve rural broadband access. Proceeds from this program can only be used for specific applications that are potentially impactful to the rural communities being served.  The program is designed to ensure that communities with populations less than 20,000 people can leverage broadband connectivity in existing industries (such as farming).The USDA also announced that $181 million will be distributed towards 88projects through the Community Facilities Direct Loan Program. Of these 88, the top 3 receiving states are New York, Georgia, and Missouri with each having at least 8 projects. The largest project is a loan over $45 million in South Carolina's Presbyterian College.

The SPS-148 unit was announced nearly three years ago after closely listening to customer design needs. The single-string battery management appliance allowed us to address our customer's battery management and maintenance needs even in the most space-constrained cabinets. The hardware is equipped to be rack-mounted in 1 RU, side-mounted on a rack, wall-mounted, door-mounted, laid into a rack shelf... it is a pretty flexible device. We are proud of this achievement by the hardware development team led by Steve Mulawski, our Chief Hardware Engineer. The SPS-248 and SPS-R™ ultimately would not be the products they are today without the lessons learned from the development of the "148".

Other countries have prioritized 5G deployments, most notably China, by pledging deployment schedules similar to those proposed by large U.S. carriers. To be fair, China has announced ambitious goals not only in communications but in other infrastructure projects such as the world's longest sea bridge. However, 5G plans in the United States took an important step forward this past month when the federal government formally recognized a new spectrum plan to support 5G rollouts.

The White House announced six month and nine month timelines to ensure that the landscape is well understood before a long strategy is put in place. The President cites job growth, wage growth, leisure and safety as direct benefits justifying the deployment of the low-latency, high-capacity network. He even goes on to specifically mention the impact on rural communities and other underserved areas, as well as the "insatiable demand" for more spectrum posed by the Internet of Things.