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Five rural counties in South Georgia are going wireless: schools and government offices first, small businesses and residences second, and farms third.

Sean Buckley, with Telecommunications Online, reports on an ambitious extension of broadband to Baker, Calhoun, Early, Miller and Mitchell counties. The new wireless system, BRIDGE,
is already is serving  four school districts and showing a profit, too.

OneGeorgia Authority and the South Georgia Regional Technology Authority, which fund and oversee the project, found that local provder AT&T could not meet the broadband needs of this rural region quickly. So BRIDGE has created a “backbone” for extending broadband wirelessly via line-of-sight radio towers.

“In three months, we had an entire carrier-grade network that was fully functional and delivering services to these schools,” said  Dustin Springman, operations manager. Now BRIDGE is at work extending broadband to residences so that students can be up to speed at home as well.