Kentucky-based Bluegrass Cellular, which is a rural wireless carrier most of us haven’t heard of before, announced it has entered into an agreement with Verizon Wireless to participate in the LTE in Rural America program. The mentioned program is created by the Big Red carrier in an effort to jumpstart the delivery of LTE services to rural communities throughout the United States.
Under the agreement, Verizon Wireless will lease to Bluegrass Cellular its 700 MHz upper C block wireless spectrum in the Bluegrass’ service areas where Verizon has not constructed a network. Bluegrass on its end will construct and operate a 4G LTE network in central Kentucky serving both its own and customers of Verizon Wireless and other LTE in Rural America participants. In addition, Bluegrass Cellular customers will have access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network throughout the country.
The press release ends with Bluegrass Cellular’s expectations of LTE speeds, which will be in the 5-12 Mbps range for downloading data and 2-5 Mbps for uploading data to a wireless device.