CoverageCo, the brainchild of the late Vanu Bose, has served communities in Vermont with cell phone service and access to emergency calling since 2012, thanks to over $4 million in public investments. According to Valley News, customers across 26 rural communities are now likely to lose service in the coming days and weeks, as the company’s operating costs have overtaken its earnings and the company faces its demise. Valley News reported that call volumes have not been high enough to collect sufficient fees from Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular, whose customers were able to connect using CoverageCo’s antennas.
Vanu Bose sought a solution for providing cell coverage in areas with difficult terrain and low population density, and endeavored to use Rwanda and Vermont as testing grounds. “What we didn’t expect was that many of the problems were the same in Rwanda and Vermont — and in fact the rollout has been much easier in Africa,” Bose told Wired in 2017. Just before his untimely death in November of 2017, Bose also installed 40 micro-cell sites across Puerto Rico to restore communication after the island was ravaged by Hurricane Maria.
The company installed 145 micro-cell devices across Vermont, granting emergency calling access to 300 square miles of the state. The network of cells has been used to place over one thousand 911 calls since their installation, according to Valley News.
Before CoverageCo arrived, Grace Cottage Hospital, located in Townshend, VT, “had the dubious distinction of being, to my knowledge, the only hospital in Vermont without any cell reception,” according to its executive officer. If CoverageCo does indeed dissolve, the hospital may once again receive that unpleasant title.
March 20, 2018
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