Pine Belt Cellular teams up with Trilogy Networks to expand digital offerings in rural areas

Pine Belt Cellular and Trilogy Networks announced plans Wednesday to work together to accelerate digital offerings in the Deep South, including to industries from farming, forestry and aerospace technology.

The partnership includes using Trilogy’s Edge Cloud platform with Pine Belt’s large network assets to increase coverage from nearly 10,000 square miles and to 35,000 square miles of 600MHz spectrum holdings, the firms said in a press release.

Through the alliance, Trilogy will use Pine Belt’s Edge Cloud Computing and low latency networking to serve a diverse group of industries spanning Central Alabama – from food and forest products to aerospace and information technology. Edge Computing optimizes the interaction of IoT sensors and devices with cloud applications by bringing compute and storage closer to the sources of data. This would reduce latency and bandwidth requirements and enable automation of cutting-edge enterprise applications.

“The U.S. government is injecting over $30 billion into rural infrastructure over the next several years,” said George Woodward, President & CEO of Trilogy Networks in a statement. “Pine Belt is no stranger to technology or government programs. John Nettles, their President, has been one of the foremost leaders advocating for years on behalf of rural carriers nationally while providing advanced solutions to the people of Alabama.”

Nettles, president of Pine Belt Cellular, said their decision to use Trilogy’s platform was “almost a no-brainer – they are the only entity involved in this high-tech segment that has shown a genuine interest in engaging with operators such as us to bring the benefits of edge computing to rural markets in the early stages rather than as an afterthought.”

“Once we have Trilogy’s platform installed and in our main network hub in Selma, we will then start the process of pushing functionality to selected sites throughout Central Alabama,” Nettles said. “These ties to the public clouds will make it possible for us to integrate across the US with the full spectrum of applications providers and carriers and will bring the real benefits of high bandwidth, low latency edge and 5G services to the area. Together we achieve the scale necessary to have a voice nationally and presence globally.”