Microsoft & Partners Fill Rural Divide With White Spaces Broadband

Fixed-mobile broadband provider Radwin this week partnered with Microsoft to develop and use White Space solutions to deliver broadband Internet to unserved communities, including rural regions of the United States.

The relationship is part of Microsoft's Airband Initiative, which promotes the use of TV white spaces -- the name commonly given unused spectrum in UHF television bands -- to bridge the digital divide by 2022. This bandwidth is in the 600 MHz frequency range and enables wireless signals to travel over hills and through buildings and trees, wrote Microsoft President Brad Smith in a July 10, 2017 blog.

"The addition of innovative TV White Space solutions to Radwin’s portfolio, which complements our sub-6GHz and mmWave fixed wireless offering, would enable our service provider customers and partners to extend their footprint by connecting more remote subscribers in challenging deployment use cases, penetrating through terrain obstructions and vegetation, and therefore helping to close the digital divide," said Sharon Sher, president and CEO of Radwin, in a statement.

In addition to fixed wireless access, Radwin's broadband solutions include backhaul, private network connectivity, video surveillance and broadband on the move for trains, vessels and vehicles. Customers include service providers and enterprises, according to Radwin.

The rural market is ripe for disruption, Sprint Chief Technology Officer John Saw told Broadband World News in an interview this week. If the federal government authorizes the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, each company's spectrum -- for example, 2.5MHz for Sprint, 600MHz and mmWave for T-Mobile -- will help the "new T-Mobile" disrupt rural broadband with a high-quality, cost-effective fixed wireless service, he said, building on a topic he raised during a presentation during the Wells Fargo 5G Forum in late June. (See Sprint CTO: Rural Ripe for Disruption With Fixed Wireless.)

Alternate technologies such as white spaces have been making a difference. In Virginia, for example, the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp., used TV white spaces to extend schools' broadband networks into students' homes so they could connect for homework, family members could get career and job resources and residents could access health, education and other benefits.

In February, Packerland Broadband -- which currently is upgrading its fiber infrastructure across Wisconsin to support its telecom, Internet and TV services -- inked a partnership with Microsoft to use its TV white spaces solution to deliver broadband to the 82,000 people living in rural regions of northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over the next four years.

"Partnering with Microsoft allows us to bring new services and push our services further into the rural landscape in our region and beyond," said Cory Heigl, vice president of Packerland Broadband, in a statement. "We are the people we serve, and in this part of the world, we want to make an impact for the better. Our partnership with Microsoft will help us to influence lives by improving at-home education, enhancing economic opportunities, keeping up with health care advancements and furthering the agricultural innovation of our rural communities."

Related posts:

• Microsoft Adds More Regional Rural Broadband Subscribers With DNG Partnership
• Microsoft: Rural Broadband Uses White Spaces, Not Fiber
• Bluesky's Mile-High 3D View Saves Wireless, Fiber Deployment Time & Costs

— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana.