Procera Networks' PacketLogic Systems Weapon of Choice for Rural Internet

The issue of getting high-speed Internet access to those who dwell in the low-density countryside has always been something of a problem. While the spirit has been willing – plenty of online companies would love to get into those much broader markets – the flesh has proven weak, as the infrastructure hasn't been quite up to snuff.

But Procera Networks' PacketLogic system is a growing part of the solution to getting Internet access out to where it hasn't been before, as the company announced earlier today that its PacketLogic system is part of several new wireless Internet service provider (WISP) deployments.

Procera Networks' PacketLogic system, along with their other offerings, provides a wide array of functions that ISPs – especially WISPs – can get behind. For instance, the Service Delivery Dashboard from Procera is a big part of some WISPs, like Evertek and United Farmer's Telephone. The CEO and general manager of these two companies, Roxanne White, described the impact of Service Delivery Dashboard on her companies' systems, saying that the devices that require the most support on the network can be more readily identified, and incentive programs geared toward driving users to devices that need less support are in the works as a result.

Utah Broadband, meanwhile, described PacketLogic as a huge boon to not only customizing traffic, but also in terms of collecting statistics and reporting on same. This allowed Utah Broadband to more readily set up tiered pricing systems, and opened up the potential for further systems to come.

PacketLogic's main selling point is the ability to better provide for things like tiered services and metered billing, giving the WISP market a better ability to roll out its services. Since wireless broadband measures often come with extremely tight broadband caps, being able to most accurately measure the services used for billing is a vital point.

Naturally, this isn't likely to fully solve the problem – Web-based businesses like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon and Google, among others want more bandwidth in play, not less. But in the short term, and especially for the unique difficulties that rural broadband presents, it's not surprising to see more tiered plans emerge, and more services emerge to support them.

It's also a good chunk of why there's more interest from the Web-based companies to offer their own services, as is the case with Google Fiber, and may be the case with a future Facebook launch.

Those interested in getting a better look at Procera's offerings can head out to the WISPAPALOOZA 2012 event in Las Vegas, running October 23-26, where they will be showing at booth 153. While this may not be the best solution for getting Internet access into everyone's hands, it will at least be a start, and that's better than nothing.