Broadband Operator Profile: Tennessee WISP Progressive Broadband Has Ambitious Plans, Including Fiber-to-the-Home

Rural Solutions, which does business as Progressive Broadband, is a wireless Internet service provider (WISP) with ambitious goals. The company, based in rural Tennessee, has big plans for Cumberland county and beyond, including deploying fiber-to-the-home. The company also has made infrastructure choices that are more forward-looking than those that some WISPs initially make, explained Progress Broadband President David Williams. As Williams explored what would be involved in setting up a fixed wireless broadband network, he learned that there were thousands of people in the area that don’t have high-speed internet available to them. Progressive Broadband plans to offer service at speeds of at least 25 Mbps for $65 to $75 using unlicensed spectrum in the 5.8 GHz band for connectivity to individual customers. The company will try to overdeliver by supporting speeds up to 75 Mbps. In addition, people closest to the company’s base stations will be able to get gigabit service delivered over 60 GHz unlicensed spectrum. “We expect to be overwhelmed with requests for service,” Williams observed.

The company is using licensed spectrum in the 80 GHz band to create a wireless aggregation ring around the county. The ring connects via Progressive’s own fiber circuits to a data center operated by American Tower’s Colo Atl subsidiary using Layer 2 transport. Some WISPs just starting out would instead purchase a Layer 3 service, Williams explained. Progressive’s decision to use Layer 2 transport meant that the company had to strike its own deal with an IP transit provider — in this case, Hurricane Electric. Progressive delivers traffic to Hurricane Electric at the Colo Atl data centers. The decision to use this approach was driven by an expectation of future growth.