An Article for the Mayors and Township Leaders of Rural America
By Michael Noel, DeReticular Founder, and Remnant, the DeReticular AI
As the leader of a rural township, you are the chief steward of your community’s future. You carry the weight of its challenges every day: a tax base that’s stretched thin, the constant struggle to maintain essential infrastructure, and the quiet exodus of young people seeking opportunities elsewhere—the “brain drain” that threatens the next generation.
You know that the “digital divide” is more than just slow internet. It’s a chasm that separates your community from modern healthcare, economic diversification, and educational opportunities. You’ve likely spent countless hours applying for complex federal and state grants, competing for limited funds that promise to run a single fiber line down Main Street, a solution that’s often too little, too late.
This approach is a patch on a crumbling foundation. It’s time to stop patching and start building something new.
At DeReticular, we don’t sell technology; we architect new economic models. We have developed a comprehensive solution designed specifically for the challenges you face. It’s called the Rural Infrastructure Operating System (RIOS), and it’s not a grant application. It is a fully-funded, public-private partnership that provides a new foundation for your community’s prosperity and growth.
What is RIOS? A New Public Utility at Zero Cost to You.
Think of RIOS as a new utility for your township, as fundamental as your water and power systems, but architected for the 21st century. It has two main components:
- A Ubiquitous Digital Fabric (WiFi 7 Mesh Network): We install a dense, powerful network of 1,000 wireless nodes across your community. This creates a blanket of high-speed, reliable internet that covers everything—from your municipal buildings and local businesses to residential neighborhoods. For your residents, this means free, high-speed internet access at 1,000 points in town. For your government, it means a secure, reliable network to modernize your own operations.
- A Community Economic Engine (The AI Compute Cluster): This is the revolutionary heart of the system. We install a private, secure, supercomputer-class cluster of 1,000 NVIDIA H100 AI servers right in your township. This is a powerful economic asset, and it is the key to the entire model.
The Unbeatable Proposition: The Zero-Cost Public-Private Partnership
As a municipal leader, your first and most important question is, “What will this cost my taxpayers?” The answer is the foundation of our partnership: Zero.
The entire multi-million dollar RIOS infrastructure is funded by a private investment group that DeReticular brings to the table. Here is how the partnership works:
- The Investment: The private group funds the entirety of the ~$1.25 million hardware and deployment cost.
- The Revenue Model: The investors generate their return by leasing the majority of the powerful AI cluster’s compute time to global technology companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, who have an insatiable demand for this kind of processing power.
- Your Township’s Contribution: Leadership. Partnership. A willingness to embrace a new model for the future. You do not contribute capital.
- Your Township’s Return: A multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art digital infrastructure asset, with no capital outlay, no debt, and no ongoing maintenance costs.
This is not a loan. It is not a typical grant with endless reporting requirements. It is a self-sustaining economic model where your community’s primary asset—its location—is leveraged to create a world-class digital foundation.
Transforming Your Township: Solving Your Toughest Problems
RIOS is the platform upon which you can solve your most persistent challenges:
- Economic Revitalization: RIOS makes your township instantly attractive to new businesses and remote workers. Local entrepreneurs, like those in the Biz Builder Mike community, are given the tools to compete on a global scale. Companies in emerging sectors like autonomous transportation (KurbKars) and sustainable energy (Agra.Energy) see your town as a prime location for deployment. This diversifies your tax base and creates new, high-quality local jobs.
- Reversing the Brain Drain: Through our DeReticular Academy, we provide free technology training to your local workforce. We don’t just provide infrastructure; we “build the builders.” This creates career paths for your young people right at home, giving them a powerful reason to stay and invest their talents in the community where they were raised.
- Modernizing Municipal Services: With a robust, secure network, you can finally move to more efficient digital services. Imagine secure online tax payments, digital permit applications, and smart utility metering that lowers the operational cost of your own government. Your emergency services can have a reliable, resilient communication network that stays online even when the wider grid goes down.
- A Revolution in Public Health and Quality of Life: RIOS enables reliable telehealth, giving your residents, especially seniors, unprecedented access to specialists. It provides the backbone for NEMT services, ensuring no one misses a critical doctor’s appointment. It enhances tourism with partners like Digital Adventures Outdoors R Us, boosting your local hospitality sector.
As Mayor, you are constantly asked to do more with less. RIOS is a unique opportunity to do exponentially more with nothing—to secure a legacy of innovation, opportunity, and prosperity for your community. This is your chance to stop trying to catch up to the digital age and, instead, leapfrog to its forefront. Let’s start a conversation about building a new foundation for your township, together.
