Peoples Telephone Cooperative, a NetAmerica Alliance Member, has begun offering 4G LTE data service in rural Texas. Peoples replaced its fixed wireless WiMax offering with LTE running on their 700MHz license.  They are using the NetAmerica Alliance’s UniPort Home Gateway which offers both wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi within the home while connecting over broadband wireless to Peoples’ newly deployed 4G LTE network.  Access to customer premise devices such as the UniPort came through the technology partnership with Ericsson which NetAmerica announced last spring.  The initial turn-up of service moved over 200 residential users from WiMax to 4G LTE in eastern Texas.

Peoples Telephone Cooperative became an Alliance Member in 2010 and took advantage of the services offered by NetAmerica to cost effectively build out their network, support their services, and gain access to leading edge 4G LTE customer devices.

“We needed to move from WiMax to 4G LTE in order to improve our service offering and to give us a path to the future,” said Steven Steele, Assistant General Manager at Peoples Telephone Cooperative.