By Jennifer Alsever
As the national unemployment rate hovers near 10%, some companies are starting to eye job-hungry areas of the country as prime candidates for the kind of outsourced work that once would have gone overseas.
Dubbed “ruralsourcing,” “rural outsourcing” and “onshoring,” the practice relies on two simple premises: Smaller towns need jobs, and they offer a cheaper cost of living than urban centers. So businesses that outsource work to these areas can expect to pay less — rates are often as much as 25% to 50% lower — than if they were hiring urbanites with comparable skills.
In response, a new crop of outsourcing startups are popping up with development centers in places like Joplin, Mo., and Eveleth, Minn., where hundreds of employees crank out software code or offer IT support for large corporate clients.
A trend that one could conceivably see happening in the Berkshires, but not without business access to to a fiber-optic network. Behind access to skilled (affordable) labor, these businesses looking for areas to locate in, are saying that access to fiber telecom infrastructure is the next most important requirement. For example, MN has several fiber-optic networks in rural areas – including the areas mentioned in the article that CrossUSA is working in.
Fortunately it’s on the horizon with the Mass Broadband 123 middle mile fiber project and the WiredWest last mile fiber network, but we MUST continue to advocate for these initiatives and support their deployment – not only to take advantage of opportunities like these, but also to position our existing businesses to compete on a level playing field with businesses in other areas of the state, country and world that already have the significant productivity and business growth advantages fiber offers.