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.