Press release

Introducing Althea AgFiber

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Sponsored by Businesswire

Staying true to their mission to bring fast, affordable, and reliable internet to rural America, Althea AgFiber, has committed to providing fiber for farmers and rural communities across the United States.

Partnering with Silo Communications, an Illinois ISP and contractor, Althea AgFiber will build over 12 miles of fiber, serving over 100 farms and homes. With farming challenges growing year-after-year, newer, smarter precision agriculture tools and machinery have become essential for modern agriculture. Newer technology means more data. The farming technology is available, the required internet access for rural farming communities is not.

Althea AgFiber and open network topology (the brainchild of Althea ISP) will make possible the connectivity necessary to power sophisticated technologies such as autonomous devices, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial imaging, and GPS driven devices. These tools allow farming to be more profitable, efficient, safer, and more environmentally friendly.

“Rural farming communities NEED fiber now,” states Althea CEO Deborah Simpier, who predicts that farming will inspire the next wave of technological innovation. “The need for fiber is growing as farming technology advances,” Simpier adds.

How it works:

Althea’s innovative Open Access Fiber will power the future of America’s Smart and Connected Farms. Each connected household can grow the network and power new services like LTE based Precision Agriculture or mobility for mobile phones and devices.

Structured as a smart contract on a blockchain, Althea’s innovative approach decouples the service layer of the network from the underlying infrastructure, enabling investment into fiber networks in unique and sustainable ways.

Althea Smart Contracts:

  • Make revenue share contracts possible between stakeholders of a broadband network.
  • Revenue share contracts reduce the amount of risk capital required to build and operate a broadband network.
  • Reducing dependence on risk capital makes it feasible for stakeholders to absorb demand risk.
  • Demand risk reduction makes it possible to deploy broadband networks in underserved areas.

Bottom line:

Agriculture is essential to everyone.

Althea AgFiber changes the way we invest and build infrastructure, triggering a move to faster, more affordable, and reliable internet—essential to modern agriculture.

About Althea (althea.net)

Althea is a new way to access broadband internet that enables growth in the network through a unique system of revenue sharing. Althea was founded in 2017 with the vision to bring the open market and interoperable peering from the data center to the field and empowering communities to build multi-stakeholder networks faster and more affordably than legacy telecom models.

About Silo Communications

Affordable, Reliable, High-Speed Broadband for Northern Illinois. SiloComm is a dedicated local company working to close the digital divide, one community at a time.