Wireless ISP Nextlink will use more than 1,000 American Tower sites to support the company’s deployment of fixed wireless broadband service to rural areas of 11 states. The Nextlink American Tower deal involves sites in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, and Wisconsin.
Nextlink had a couple of big pieces of funding news in the past couple of years that put it in position for the Tower collocation deal.
The company was awarded $281.3 million in the Connect America Fund (CAF) II auction in 2018, with funding contingent on building out service to more than 100,000 locations within six years. The other big win was in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, in which Nextlink provisionally won $429.2 million for 206,136 locations in 12 states.
The press release about the Nextlink American Tower agreement notes that Nextlink is “rapidly expanding its current service footprint across six states – Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois – and working to bring high-speed broadband to underserved areas of 11 states.”
Nextlink sees American Tower as an important part of this effort, Baker said in the press release. “With a robust portfolio in rural markets and proven track record of providing exceptional service to ISPs and fixed wireless providers, American Tower is the ideal partner and our preferred tower provider in helping us meet critical build deadlines and expedite internet access in underserved areas.”
Baker told Telecompetitor in 2018 that the company’s strategy included building many of its own towers and for more remote areas, the company may need to continue to use that approach.
American Tower built hundreds of towers in Oklahoma, a significant percentage of which contain no tenants at all for some reason, perhaps it’s the high rental rates they charge. In a lot of those locations, carriers have built their own towers right next to American Tower sites and they are fully loaded with other co-located carriers. I guess this plan is designed for American to put those towers to actual use since they have no tenants. Nextlink’s coverage area is teensy, so hopefully this deal will allow them to expand. All schemes such as this are eventually going to come up against enormous competition from Starlink, if and when they get enough satellites in place to offer service in the US, which is currently at such a pace that is will take many years to happen. If they can get to where they can launch more than 60 satellites every 2-3 months, based on the performance I have seen from users in Canada, Starlink may put all these efforts to shame.
Starlink is already launching 60 satellites every 2-3 weeks. They already have near constant coverage of the 48 states.
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The Starlink System is not a proven system and yet they get fed funding. What a joke and then they will charge $100.00 per month which no-one in the rural area can afford. Plus the hardware costs.
I hate to say it that 5G is are only savor to bring the price and speed needed to the rural area. All the rest of these systems are Band-Aids.
What federal funding are you talking about? Show us where that information comes from please.
The hardware cost is a one time $500 fee for the dish and router. No installation fee, easy self set up. Faster speeds than any other rural internet provider. No data caps. No contracts.
Starlink already raised monthly cost once and most of us don’t need 100+ mb we just want stable 10-20mbps for a reasonable price.