Coeur d’Alene Tribe
Red Spectrum was established in 2004, first as a wireless network and then as a fiber network, and serves over 1600 households on the Coeur d’Alene in Northern Idaho. The network was funded through an investment from the Coeur d’Alene tribe and a combination of loans and grants from USDA’s Community Connect grant, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) act, USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS),and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Their wireless service uses both the 2.4 GHz and the 5GHz bands of unlicensed spectrum. Red Spectrum built its own middle-mile and FTTH network and has plans to expand that FTTH network across their reservation.
Read about Red Spectrum racing to meet CARES Act construction deadline of December 2020 here. Read the in-depth case study of the network in “Building Indigenous Future Zones: Four Tribal Broadband Case Studies” (ILSR 2021).