From Dirt Roads to Digital Highways
A Rural Operator’s Roadmap to America’s Broadband Future
A business born of necessity
Thirty-three years ago my husband and I laid cable to our own farmhouse because we wanted cable TV…and no one else would do it! Back in the day we were underground contractors—laying coax and fiber optic cable for other companies—so we already knew the labor, the rock, and the mud. What we didn’t know was how that one, single, do-it-yourself “house-drop” would grow into BOYCOM Cablevision and define the rest of my life!
Today we’re still burying fiber in that same Ozark soil, only now our customers span four rural counties in SE Missouri. These folks do all the working and playing and living and dying in SE Missouri. We are homegrown, living in the very communities that we serve. Our summer evenings still end with checking on our beef cattle operation and canning tomatoes! RURAL work and RURAL broadband have always shared the same dirt under my fingernails.
The unicorns of broadband
Independent, first-generation, woman-led broadband companies are rare. Call us unicorns or call us pioneers, but we do exist. The journey from a one-mile build to a multi-system operation taught me something Washington often overlooks: grit, ingenuity, and local trust outshines sheer scale any day of the week.
Wayne County, Missouri, where we serve as few as 17 homes per mile, has ranked below the US poverty line since the 1960 census; yet even home buyers where I live now rate fast, reliable Internet above school districts when choosing where to live. Broadband is more than convenience. It’s the oxygen and life blood of rural economic life.
Why fiber still wears the crown
Every wireless tower, every low Earth orbit satellite, and every 5G node eventually connects to a piece of fiber. You’ve got to hit a pipe somewhere eventually. Likewise, if you want long-term capacity, you lay glass. For 15 years Boycom has gone fiber-only in its new builds, boring through shale, punching conduit under driveways, and even setting charges to place hand-holes in solid rock.
I support a technology-inclusive toolbox: fixed wireless and low Earth orbit constellations absolutely have roles to play where fiber can’t go, whether physically or economically. Yet, public policy must keep “GOOD-BETTER-BEST” straight. Treating every medium as identical only risks under-serving the very people BEAD dollars are meant to lift-RURAL AMERICA.
From contractor to capitol hill advocate
My personal story and my policy work are inseparable. In 1992, I helped, along with a whole host of other entrepreneurs, launch what is now ACA Connects precisely because the Cable Act of that year threatened to drown small operators in regulation. ACA was born in a Kansas City hotel meeting room with ONE ISSUE/ONE VOICE.
Thirty years on, ACA Connects is now THE voice of bipartisan thought leadership for hundreds of rural independent operators and ISPs. We advocate issues from BEAD to pole-attachment fairness, deploy mapping truth-serum, and remind regulators and legislators that a form letter can bury a 17-person company in months of paperwork. I still walk the halls of Congress, both the House and Senate, as well as the FCC at least six times a year because if rural voices don’t show up, policy defaults to the loudest lobby budget, not the hardest-working boots.
The rural test kitchen for America’s future
Our region is more than a poster child for the “digital divide,” it’s a proving ground. If symmetrical gig speeds work on gravel roads, they’ll work anywhere. If a fourth-grader in Ripley County can “tele-tutor” in coding, then urban districts have no excuse.
That’s why I mentor operators facing the same topography and capital hurdles we tackled years ago, and why ACA Connects keeps a laser focus on light-touch, right-sized regulation. Rural networks don’t need handouts; they need a hand up and a fair shot with freedom to build.
The road ahead, and an invitation
Federal funding windows and FCC rulemakings will come and go, but rural broadband’s core equation stays constant: miles of plant ÷ customers served × community commitment. The last variable is the only one money can’t buy!
To lawmakers reading this issue of Broadband Library: visit an independent operator! Hell, call ME! Hear the hum of a splicing trailer at dawn. Ask a 12-year-old what a stable upload means for her science fair entry. And please, please, measure success by capacity delivered per dollar spent rather than by novelty alone.
To fellow operators: keep telling your stories. The trenches you dig today form the backbone of tomorrow’s rural economy, rural telemedicine, and rural distance learning. Let’s make sure our work, and our voices, stay at the heart of America’s digital strategy.
Women’s voices: Progress and perspective
Kimberly Maki invited me to write for Broadband Library precisely because the publication is expanding its audience—from engineers and SCTE members to members of Congress, state broadband directors, and corporate boards—and strong female representation is imperative.
I’ve sat on “Women in Broadband” panels from Denver, Colorado to Cologne, Germany and the generational gaps are striking: my own path involved breaking down doors that today’s 30-somethings don’t even see. That’s progress, but we’re not done until mixed-gender panels are the default and young professional women can no longer imagine an industry that ever excluded them.
We’ve still got a lot of work to do, so let’s saddle up…we RIDE AT DAWN!
Circa 1992! Steve, Patty, and Matthew Boyers.
Aerial fiber construction of new mainline after EF3 tornado Butler County, March 14, 2025.
BOYCOM TEAM! Though we be small, we be MIGHTY!
Patricia Jo Boyers,
Chair of ACA Connects and President/CEO & Co-Founder of BOYCOM Cablevision, Inc.
Patricia Jo Boyers has served in this capacity since 2008. Her previous position was Executive VP/CFO since the inception of the company in 1992. Boyers is also President and 100% owner of Boyers Communications, Inc., a Missouri designated DBE in the business of underground cable construction and custom road boring since 1982. Patty has served on the board of directors for ACA Connects since April 16, 2007. She is currently serving her fifth year as Chairman. Boyers was recently re-elected to an unprecedented third two-year term, making her the longest serving Chairman of ACA Connects, and only the second woman in the Association’s 32 year history.
Learn more at
acaconnects.org
Images, Provided by author, Shutterstock
