Ping John Larkin... Cell Phone in Boonies

Very impressive: Is this funded or subsidized by CAF?

After several failed attempts to obtain federal funding, the local ISP's are doing their own on a limited basis, some funded by state utility bill surcharge: So far, it's working well but with very limited deployments, much in the style of the 1990's overbuilders. For example:

The problem with broadband deployment has always been the backhaul and last mile distribution, both of which are dominated by the incumbent monopolies (ILEC's). The current topology is to use privately owned or contracted fiber for the backhaul, and licensed wireless for the distribution. The system is growing, but once again, it's growing in the densely populated areas, not the sparsely populated semi-rural areas. For obvious reasons, the bulk of the available customers and highest revenue are in the densely populated areas. This has been the pattern for all such systems. Get the licenses, approvals, and funding for serving the rural customers, but initially deploy in the urban areas.

I'm impressed that the co-op is serving your area. To do the same thing with cable TV and internet, 5 local communities had to convince the county that the cable franchise would be renewed on the condition that Comcast would provide service to these communities. (Page 4) To the best of my knowledge, all of them now have cable service.

Incidentally, after a 2009 fiber sabotage. AT&T discovered that there was only one fiber run connecting Silicon Valley and the Monterey Bay. So, it hastily ran a backup fiber: mostly along Hwy 9, a narrow serpentine road full of fast cars during commute hours. Most of the short term outages have been caused by cars hitting the poles along the highway. Longer outages require a backhoe, a state contractor, and really bad timing: Guard your fiber runs well.

Never mind, I foundit. List of the Connect America Fund recipients by service provider, State, and county:

Chattanooga would be in Hamilton county, where AT&T received $10,792 for 71 homes and businesses. I don't want to go through the other 9 spreadsheets to see if any of the other ISP's got money from the FCC for "Support for Rural Broadband Expansion". Do any of these 9 other providers provide service in Hamilton county?

Argh. The national summary was buried among the ISP's as "Nationwide Acceptance" which I assumed as an ISP: Looks like TN got $29,927,295 for 93,422 homes and businesses, mostly by handing the money to AT&T. No clue yet what it was used for.

Phased plasma rifle in the 40W range.