Alexander County December Updates

First Customers in Alexander County

We have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. Since the November newsletter, we installed our antennas on Linney’s Mountain Tower, tuned the settings, turned up our first customers, and recruited our first local installers. We are still in the process of training our local installers and expanding the areas we can cover. The Taylorsville Times and Alexander EDC both shared articles related to our first customer install. While many of you probably read the Taylorsville Times article, I encourage you to read the Alexander County EDC article for more information on the pilot program.

Open Broadband Area Manager Nichole Rowland with his first customer — Left: Open Broadband Area Manager Nichole Rowland is pictured with the first customer in Alexander County Patrick Beilharz with the installed antenna at his home on Tower Road in Taylorsville in an article that was in the Taylorsville Times Thanksgiving week. Right: The same antenna as viewed from the road, the antenna is barely noticeable especially when compared to the much larger previously installed dish beside it.

December Target Area

Please review the map and if you are in the December target areas you should have been contacted to have an installation scheduled. We will not be targeting this area again after December until we finish targeting the other areas in the Pilot project. Note: You don’t have to have your installation in December but you do need to discuss your installation plans with Nichole (the Area Manager) at (704) 665-7561 or nichole@openbb.net.

Highlighted targeted are on map for december — Pictured: The Green highlighted areas are being targeted in December for installation.

Linney Mountain Tower Antennas Installed

In October (link) we explained that the reason why we selected Linney Mountain to be our first tower. We wanted to share some pictures of the installation of our antennas.

Workers installing multiple antennas to provide better service — Pictured: The installation took a couple of days for the tower climbers. We installed multiple antennas to provide both line of sight coverage and also LTE for non-line of sight. These antennas are the start of our network in Alexander County and this was an event we celebrated.

Energy United Poles

Do you have an Energy Unite Pole on your property? In last month’s newsletter, we discussed the reasons we need the Energy United Pole information.
If your property (the pole) is located in a high location and you can safely take photos of the pole then it would be very helpful to share the following information on this form that will help us know where we may be able to utilize the poles to get service to you:

Energy United Pole Number (this should be located on the pole it may be a new six-digit number on a yellow tag or it may be an older number two or three-digit number.
Use Google Maps to find the latitude and longitude of the pole Google provides the directions here (this step is optional so don’t worry if you aren’t comfortable with this step).
Provide your address put the street number in one field and the street name in another and then give the closest street to your street.
Provide some information about the location of the pole.
Provide your information.
Provide any other information that you think will be useful for us to understand about the pole or area in General Notes.
Upload pictures that show the view from the pole.

Please Use this Form Link to Provide Information about Your Energy United Pole.

Energy United Poles — Pictured: Top left new numbering format for Energy United poles, top right older numbering format for Energy United poles. Bottom left the view from an Energy United pole. Bottom right the view from another Energy Unite pole this one shows the clear line of sight to Linney Tower (this would be an example of useful information to include in the location details).

We are still looking for local workers …

We are interviewing and hiring local Internet service testers (see job description) and are looking to hire entry-level installation technicians (see job description). Interested applicants should email a resume to info@openbb.net for consideration.

Links to Previous Newsletters (and topics)

No. 2 Nov. 2019 – Taylorsville Apple Festival – Marketing and Free WiFi, Alexander County Waitlist is Over 800 and Growing, and Linney Mountain Tower Preparation, (links to Apple festival pictures, Google Maps – Energy United Poles, current planned focus area map, and available positions). Link to November Newsletter.

No. 1 Oct. 2019 – Linney Mountain Tower (why start with Linney), Alexander County Waitlist – Over 600 – The process for managing residential sign-ups was described, announced that we would be providing WiFi at the Apple Festival and shared local positions. Link to October Newsletter.