BTC Communications Steps Up to Serve Tennessee’s Underserved Communities

In Tennessee, municipal broadband providers cannot extend services outside their electric territory, even if the providers would have the ability to provide the service. Therefore, rural electric and telephone cooperatives have stepped into this void to provide broadband services. The Southeast Tennessee Development District has worked with Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative for the past 10 years to identify, secure, and deploy grant dollars toward the last mile broadband infrastructure.

Bledsoe Telephone Cooperative serves portions of five counties in southeastern Tennessee. Bledsoe’s service area covers 804 square miles, including the majority of Bledsoe and Sequatchie counties and portions of Cumberland, Van Buren, and Hamilton counties in Tennessee. Since 1953, Bledsoe has followed its mission to provide this rural mountainous service area with state-of-the-art telecommunications service. It began with voice service and today includes broadband and video.

Bledsoe’s service area has 100% coverage of broadband and receives continuous requests for service from neighboring communities that lack sufficient service levels. In an effort to expand and meet the broadband needs of neighboring communities, Bledsoe formed a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) operating under the name BTC Communications (BTC) in 2018. BTC currently serves portions of the Cumberland Plateau including a portion of the Walden’s Ridge community in Rhea County and a small portion of Cumberland County along Highway 101 in the southern portion of the county. BTC communications is currently positioned to serve any areas surrounding Bledsoe’s established ILEC territory.