EZ LTE Hits 10 Minnesota Counties with Tazca Connects, Radio Link Internet Project

Getting Internet service of any kind for rural-dwellers isn't always easy. Low population density often means low potential profit and long payback times for installers. For Tazca Connects and Radio Link Internet, however, bringing LTE service to rural Minnesota was a simpler task than some expected. Now, 10 counties in rural Minnesota have access to LTE thanks to the Citizens Band Spectrum and EZ LTE.

EZ LTE, as described by our own Rich Tehrani, is an exemplification of Moore's Law, in which hardware gets faster and smaller every couple of years. Essentially, formerly huge carrier equipment is scaled down so far that it can be effectively placed on a coffee table. Then it can be connected to the managed 3.65 GHz spectrum, and what amounts to a carrier is established, thus the name EZ LTE.

That level of ease of use and comparatively small footprint is part of what drove Radio Link Internet to choose Tazca Connects' EZ LTE service. Radio Link Internet president Daniel Petsinger elaborated, noting that Tazca Connects could offer a Private LTE solution that was not only affordable, but also offered reliable connections that didn't depend on line-of-sight access. With Tazca Connects' system in place, Petsinger noted, Radio Link Internet could offer a package that would make most urbanites jealous, featuring unlimited data plans with neither caps nor throttling after certain points.

With EZ LTE, consumers get access to a connection system that offers the economy of Wi-Fi while also offering the quality of service (QoS) and security that LTE can offer. Powered by networking software that's managed on the cloud, and boasts a virtualized evolved packet core (EPC) to offer further power. Since it's run on the Citizens Band spectrum, there's some real opportunity to bring LTE service to more places.

Considering that Radio Link Internet is already offering service to 11 counties in Minnesota, and offering residential service that goes as fast as 30 Mbps—business service goes up to 300 Mbps—it's the kind of service that rural dwellers would love. Combine that with hardware that's small enough to fit on a coffee table yet provide such speeds and bandwidth and it may be the best use of the Citizens Band radio signal since Smokey and the Bandit. There are some concerns in terms of devices that can handle the signal, but reports suggest that dongles are doing a nice job of keeping up on that front. It could not only be the answer to ruralite dreams of high-speed connectivity, but it could also be a great backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT), which will require plenty of bandwidth to keep all the nodes and sensors and the like up and running.

EZ LTE may be an exciting new solution to many connectivity issues out there, and seeing how many roles it's actually installed in should be an exciting new development.