BendBroadband, an operator you never heard of, is a family owned ISP that has been operating out of Central Oregon since 1955. They’re in the business of providing service to as many people as possible, but digging up the roads to lay cable is too costly. They scratched their heads and decided that wireless is the answer to their problem. BendBroadband is the first company in America to launch a commercial HSPA+ network, which is pretty sad when you think about the American wireless ecosystem since you’d think AT&T or T-Mobile would have got around to doing that first. Customers can look forward to enjoying average speeds between 6 and 8 Mbps, and peaks of 15 Mbps, which isn’t fast when you compare it to Verizon’s fiber based FIOS service, or Cablevision’s DOCSIS 3.0 based cable service, but it sure as hell is better than dial up.
“Our significant investments in this wireless service combined with our dedicated team of local employees enables us to deliver a best-of-breed broadband experience to our neighbors in the surrounding areas. Until now, many rural Central Oregonians have had little or no access to broadband. We are proud to lead the nation with the first HSPA+ deployment with the country’s fastest wireless broadband service.” — Amy Tykeson, President and CEO of BendBroadband
It speaks volumes that there are parts of America, today, that do not have broadband. Like many emerging economies who were forced into the information age virtually overnight, going wireless was the most economic option to move forward. Will BendBroadband update to LTE when it becomes cheap enough? Will their customers bring down the HSPA+ network by torrenting too much? Are they going to get any money form Obama because they actually did something useful? Time will tell, but I wish Amy and her customers the best of luck.
Word of advice: While I wouldn’t call your service expensive, I wouldn’t call it cheap either; $50 per month for 50 GB is a bit bananas.
[Via: Press Release (PDF File), Cellular News]