Anterix contributed a session paper, by Steve Castaneda, to the 2022 CIGRE US National Committee Grid of the Future Symposium. U.S. electric utilities are in a near-constant cycle of spending time and budget overlaying and “patching” new technologies onto an electric grid created more than a century ago. Government mandates and evolving technologies make this a more urgent requirement. They are the primary reasons utilities are trying to move away from proprietary, legacy networks to create underlying communications networks that provide greater visibility, control, and automation. For utilities, doing nothing to create a smarter grid with an underlying next-generation critical communications network is no longer optional.