Rural broadband is an issue that hits
close to home for me. I grew up in the remote reaches of Michigan's Upper
Peninsula, where cellular service is spotty and high-speed Internet is rare. As
the FCC says, it's an "underserved area."
Without a decent broadband connection,
rural residents like my parents are left without a critical lifeline to
information and resources that residents of more advanced areas take for
granted. The communities they live in are left without the technological
infrastructure they need to attract new businesses.
At a time when rural America is being
hit harder than most by the economic downturn, broadband access is especially
critical.
Yet those communities are the least
likely to see LTE service any time soon because their sparse populations make
them unprofitable for top-tier operators.
That's why two relatively minor
announcements today caught my eye.
The first was news that Peoples
Telephone Cooperative had lit up LTE service in eastern Texas.
Regional operators like Peoples
Telephone have long complained about the cost and difficulty of obtaining LTE
equipment that runs on their particular chunk of the 700 MHz band, which is
different than the swath used by Goliath competitors AT&T and Verizon
Wireless. On their own, smaller providers lack the resources and buying power
to get the gear they need at affordable prices.
Peoples Telephone didn't set out on its
own to deploy its new network. Instead, the local exchange carrier used
resources provided by the NetAmerica Alliance to replace its fixed WiMAX
service with LTE running on its 700 MHz spectrum. About 200 residential
customers were switched over to the new technology.
Peoples Telephone is the first company involved
with the NetAmerica Alliance to get its network off the ground. NetAmerica was
formed to bring together disparate independent carriers, giving them the buying
power they need to affordably construct LTE networks on their 700 MHz and AWS
spectrum. The group cut a deal with Ericsson last March to provide its members
with radios, the evolved packet core, IMS architecture and gateways for homes
and small businesses.
NetAmerica could be the launching pad
for more regional operators. Its communal approach to deployment gives
companies like Peoples Telephone the leverage they need to bring LTE to market
- exciting stuff for small operators that had all but given up hope of
realizing their mobile broadband ambitions.
The second item that struck me was an
announcement that wireless Internet service provider JAB Broadband was adding
200 new microwave links from DragonWave to support its network upgrades.
JAB Broadband tends to fly under the radar,
so you may not know that it’s the country's largest provider of fixed wireless
service using unlicensed spectrum for last-mile connectivity. The Englewood,
Colo.-based company has more than 120,000 customers in ex-urban and rural areas
of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois and Wisconsin.
JAB Broadband is an important resource
for the communities it serves, getting connections out to people who would
otherwise have to resort to dial-up service.
Like its larger brethren, JAB is
grappling with a massive surge in data traffic. Co-founder Jeff Kohler recently
told me that data use is up 66 percent over last year with the average customer
using 20-25 GB per month. Kohler says JAB Broadband is responding to the upward
trend with sweeping upgrades, essentially rebuilding its network to keep pace
with demand.
Americans in the boondocks are hungry
for connectivity, too.
The FCC estimates that 18 million
Americans don’t have access to a high-speed Internet connection. Tier 1 operators
mindful of their bottom line have made only limited promises to deploy LTE in
remote regions of the country.
Providing rural America with the
infrastructure it needs will require both innovative approaches like those of
the NetAmerica Alliance and dedicated providers like JAB Broadband and Peoples
Telephone.
Maybe there’s even hope for my home
state – but don’t hold your breath.