National Telecommunications services in the United States are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission for services. FCC compliance includes spectrum acquisition and radio licensing, tower management, pole attachment regulations, and the unique transactional issues in procuring telecom or IT services from commercial service providers. Individual states have an obligation to protect the public interest of access to reliable intrastate, telecommunications services. States regulate telecommunication policies through their public service commission’s involvement with regulating and overseeing public utilities with its jurisdiction. States also regulate telecommunication related rates, operations, and services.

Like all business decisions, there is both economic risk and reward for utilities and municipalities looking to provide telecom services, and entities have different business models, stakeholders, project timelines and budgets that have to be adhered to. As decades pass, Utilities have increased opportunity and responsibility for adding telecommunication services and equipment’s to their working portfolios. In rural areas, utilities and local municipalities who own existing infrastructure are prime candidates to “close the digital divide” or provide last mile or middle mile broadband and fiber services to folks outside of major carrier networks. Utilities and municipalities in metro areas have the opportunity to densify existing networks with the implementation of the next generation network, 5G, providing increased reliability and service bandwidth.

Different regional and business operations have provided an opportunity for the ever-evolving advent of telecommunications technology and equipment. From network technologies like fiber optics, broadband, generational networks like 5G to physical equipment like small cells, wireless and wireline attachments provide telecommunication services that have become more reliable than ever before. Advances like physical networking, switching, Wide Area Networks, Virtual Circuit technologies, IP-PSTN, and MPLS Networks and traffic profiles are what make smart infrastructure like IoT, electric vehicles, NG9-1-1 and Distributive Energy Resources (DERs) a major part of our current reality.

Every business sector covered in EUCI events has a little or a lot of technology associated with it. In each appropriate context, the technology coverage addresses the elemental structure of that thing or that system or that process. Equally important, the technology training also encompasses non-empirical, qualitative dimensions:

• What can it do?
• What are its benefits?
• What follows it?
• How can it be leveraged to raise the tide for all boats in the same body of water?

At EUCI programs, practitioners explore the boundaries of their craft without leaving their less informed counterparts behind. Recent university graduates, or staff members moving into new roles, or fresh hires from a different industry can all find training to provide themselves a strong foundation. Advanced courses and conferences supplement that knowledge transfer, ushering them forward to the next level of cognition and awareness.