Advantenon Partners with Mimosa and State Government to Deliver Fiber-Fast Fixed Wireless

Building on their experience connecting farming communities in Traverse County, Minnesota, wireless internet service provider Advantenon is now tapping into the State’s Border-to-Border Broadband Development Grant Program to deliver high-speed connectivity to rural Wilkin, Grant and Stevens counties. The State-funded program sets aside $20 million to invest in the building of broadband infrastructure into unserved or underserved areas of Minnesota.

Using the funds provided, Advantenon will connect 528 unserved households, 132 unserved businesses, and eight unserved “community anchor institutions” – schools, police departments and health care facilities – in eligible service areas. In partnership with Mimosa Networks, the Advantenon service will boost download and upload broadband speeds to 100 Mbps (250 Mbps for some business customers), exceeding the speed goal set by the State for the year 2026. With broadband speeds come automated farming operations, education portals for online learning, and high-quality video streaming to the State’s most under-connected residents and businesses.

Dramatically Cutting Cost Per Subscriber
 

Compared to the costs of a fiber deployment, the economics of fixed wireless make a compelling business case, especially in these remote areas. Advantenon estimates the cost of running fiber to these customers to be $40,000/subscriber. With Mimosa’s fixed wireless solutions, Advantenon cut their cost to just $1,000/subscriber, delivering all the performance of fiber with an ROI of just 24 months.

“There are many rural areas in Minnesota that will never be served by fiber due to prohibitive costs and deployment challenges,” said David Coudron, President at Advantenon. “We are thrilled that we have the technology at our fingertips and the expertise to bring fiber-fast speeds to these hard-to-reach communities. The price/performance and the speed of deployment of Mimosa fixed wireless means we can easily and rapidly serve these under-connected areas.”

The speed of deployment is another critical selling point for fixed wireless – from start to finish, it took Advantenon just two months to service an area covering over 650 rural subscribers. In architecting the network, Advantenon relied on 11 GHz licensed spectrum, deploying 26 Mimosa B11 point-to-point backhaul radios to deliver gigabit speeds over the wide Minnesota prairie. Advantenon chose licensed 11 GHz spectrum to beef up its backhaul and eliminate the possibility of ever running into interference, a smart investment given the mission-critical businesses on its network.

To deliver last mile connectivity, Advantenon carefully selected ten tower locations using the Mimosa Design Tool, and used those towers to connect Mimosa A5c access points to the B11 radios. Client provisioning at residences and businesses is accomplished with a mixture of Mimosa C5 and C5c client devices in point-to-multipoint links.

As in Traverse County, high-speed internet has unlocked the power of Internet of things (IoT) applications, allowing farmers to tap into connected systems to improve productivity. Remote monitoring and control of livestock, equipment, leaks and system issues are now standard requirements for modern agribusiness. Advantenon also expects security systems to be an increasing part of farm business, with demand for connected cameras installed on a larger scale for farm yards.

Feedback from farm owners has been overwhelmingly positive. “The availability of ultra-broadband fixed wireless has been a game changer for the Minnesota farming community, allowing farmers to access critical data that was previously unavailable to them,” said Coudron. “Access to these speeds gives farmers new opportunities to improve their forecasting and operations planning, and ultimately, their profitability.”

“The availability of ultra-broadband fixed wireless has been a game changer for the Minnesota farming community. Access to these speeds gives farmers new opportunities to improve their forecasting and operations planning, and ultimately, their profitability.”

Coudron continued, “By bringing high-speed internet to our communities, we have immensely improved the productivity of our community and made Minnesota a better place to work and play. Once again, the ease of deploying Mimosa solutions made this a very simple project to execute, bringing immediate benefits to our community.”