Peak to Peak Communications
Partnering to boost broadband in the Sierra Nevada
Jim Kossow has spent his life in Plumas County, California. He is a licensed radio operator, firefighter, and supports ad-hoc emergency service communications for mobile command centers. With this background, few people are better placed to understand the connectivity challenges of Plumas and its neighboring counties — with their mountainous terrain, dispersed rural populations, and high risk of wildfires.
And so we’re excited to be partnering with Jim to boost broadband in the region.
Jim founded Peak to Peak Communications to provide the accessible infrastructure that communities and businesses in rural areas need for resilient communications. He currently provides tower access in Plumas, Lassen, and Sierra Counties. Now, Connect Humanity is providing the company financing to purchase a second tower and upgrade its existing equipment to ensure greater power resilience and to avoid outages.
Peak to Peak’s existing tower in Graeagle hosts amateur radio repeaters and is the first relay to bring high-speed microwave connectivity into Greenville — a Plumas town that was devastated by the 2021 Dixie fire.
The second tower location will improve and expand Peak to Peak’s coverage area and resiliency, better meeting the needs of emergency services, local businesses, utilities operators, and last mile service providers.
Peak to Peak’s newly purchased tower at Mt. Hough, outside Quincy in Plumas County
Peak to Peak’s newly purchased tower at Mt. Hough, outside Quincy in Plumas County
The region badly needs investment in connectivity infrastructure.
In an area where reliable broadband is critical for both economic development and public safety, there are huge coverage gaps.
Incumbent operators — AT&T and Frontier — offer slow service, with speeds 3Mbps at best: too slow for telehealth appointments, video calls, or browsing on multiple devices. And there is just a single fixed wireless provider, which offers limited bandwidth and strict data caps. The very few people within reach of fiber pay above market rates. Residents and businesses are getting a raw deal.
One reason more wireless operators haven’t entered the market is a lack of affordable vertical assets — places to install the equipment necessary to provide service.
The mountainous area has few municipal assets for operators to use and the dominant private tower company caters to large cellular service providers, with prices out of reach for would-be wireless operators looking to serve communities in Plumas, Lassen, and Sierra.
Peak to Peak aims to fill this gap and provide the tower space that wireless operators, businesses, and government services in the area need — and at rates they can afford.
When Connect Humanity started working in Plumas County, we came with questions about what the community needs. We didn’t start with a solution or a specific technology we wanted to invest in. This agnostic approach gives us the freedom to explore solutions that best serve local people — to meet communities where they are and with what they need.
While our investments to date have mostly been in customer-facing providers, such as Wave 7 in North Carolina and Point Broadband in Alabama, the partnership with Peak to Peak is instead upstream from last-mile connectivity, helping to build the infrastructure on which other service providers can operate. This will ultimately catalyze a healthier broadband ecosystem — leading to more options for residents and local businesses and better service across the region.
We arrived at this investment after consulting with a range of local stakeholders over the course of a year, who made it clear that building a launch pad to market entrants offers a clearer path to connectivity than trying to identify and fund a last-mile provider directly. We’re thrilled to be supporting Peak to Peak to do just that.
Keep in touch
To learn more about our work, connect with us and write to us anytime at info@connecthumanity.fund.
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