A Perfect Storm is brewing in the heartland of the United States. The focal point of the storm will land in Southeastern Missouri in an area called the Ozark Mountain region.

There are many factors which are causing this storm to build to an enormous magnitude. The region is on the edge of a major fault line called the New Madrid Fault, the source of the largest earthquake ever to hit the central United States in the early 1800’s. Scientists now state that the New Madrid Fault is ready to shift once again and could soon cause a catastrophic event in the Central US.

The Ozark Mountain region is reeling with the recent economic downturn and unemployment is at an all time high for the region. Although the landscape is beautiful, the people who live in this region have been challenged by topology, weather, a mining industry that has dried up and other factors that affect their daily lives.

As technology continues to evolve, the world is becoming a smaller place, but to most in the Missouri Ozarks, the modern world seems far away. What will happen to this region if the BIG Quake hits again soon? Where will the jobs come from? How will hospitals, schools and public service afford to continue operations? How many lives will be lost due to a very poor communication system and no Broadband? A storm of great intensity is definitely brewing here.

Enter the Broadband Stimulus program, signed into law in 2009. The program is designed to fund construction of Broadband Systems for the un-served and underserved areas of our country. The Missouri Ozarks is ABSOLUTELY one of those places. Broadband in this region is all but non-existent. Children are suffering, schools are suffering, industry is suffering and on and on. What a great achievement it would be to have a company design a Broadband Network and apply for a Grant to do exactly what the law intended.

The people of the Missouri Ozarks see the Storm brewing and so does the ShowMe Broadband project.

ShowMe Broadband is a project of St. Louis Broadband, LLC. The project proposes to serve ten counties, including three persistent poverty counties, within Southeast Missouri, constructing 116 Microwave towers in an area where so few exist.

Our experience and research has enabled us to design the ShowMe Broadband Project, a brainchild of St. Louis Broadband, as a viable means of bringing high speed Internet to rural Missouri. We have developed our proposal for over two years anticipating our targeted end users needs and the opportunity to submit this application.

The network of towers and a new Network Operations Center (NOC) will be built with redundant fiber connections to the St. Louis NAP. A third fiber path to the Kansas City NAP will also be integrated into the network. Multiple redundant paths are absolutely necessary to meet Public Safety criteria and to guarantee maximum performance for our customers.

This enables ShowMe Broadband to PROACTIVELY react to a catastrophic event for this area, not only for our area, but also St. Louis, MO.

Some towers with a +3 wind factor will be equipped with wind turbines; all towers will adopt solar power for alternative power and reduction of utility usage and costs.

We have applied the science of spectrum testing, GPS coordination, product review and have gone as far as knocking on the doors of our community residents to inquire how we could best serve them. We conducted a premarketing study to confirm what services were available to our local counties and determined through empirical studies to initiate a five county network. This figure grew as we discovered a widespread lack of services and the enthusiastic response we received from the communities. Make sure you review our support letters. Our priorities and commitments are community safety, economic growth, health and education combined with diligence in providing the best service possible.

Our data shows our service would be available to 180 schools, 30 libraries, 429 medical and healthcare providers, 216 public safety entities, 1,119 public housing facilities, 4 Institutions of higher education, 612 community support organizations and 25 government facilities for a total of 2,615 critical community facilities and public safety entities. In addition, our service area passes 77,678 homes and 9,254 businesses for a total of 89,547 premises passed.

ShowMe Broadband will be located in an extensively mined area of Missouri. Our coverage area of 6,110 square miles includes entire communities constructed on 467 abandoned and working mines. Recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Turkey have demonstrated the devastation that can occur and emphasizes our need for emergency services. Some of our proposed counties have latent or non-existent E911 and at least two counties do not have their own 911 service. Contributing to the hardship are recent drastic Government cuts to the budget of $29 million for public safety.

ShowMe Broadband is set to address this challenge by installing a FREE Public Safety network within our network coverage. Employment of our towers for emergency communications will address the vital need to proactively prevent the devastating effects of a potential disaster of catastrophic nature in southeastern Missouri.

St. Louis Broadband has been successfully providing broadband services to formerly un-served St. Louis businesses since 2003. Some of the clients we provide service to are three Labor Unions, the St. Louis Chapter of the American Red Cross and one of the largest technology firms in the Midwest.

We have received a Memorandum of Understanding with an equity investment firm, whereas they have expressed their intent to underwrite the funding of $10 million dollars through an agreement with contingencies staged to coincide on a 'pari passu' basis with the disbursement of grant funds by the  RUS.

ShowMe Broadband will use a combination of fiber and wireless technologies to cost effectively reach residents, businesses and public safety facilities with a reliable and redundant high capacity network mesh covering the area.

In many of the NTIA Public meetings, fixed wireless was called the “more bang for the buck” technology. Our network is decidedly open; our towers are engineered for collocation to accommodate Cellular providers as well as AWS licensed spectrum holders.  We use unlicensed frequencies that enable other WISPS to freely collocate with us without owning spectrum license.

We have calculated the overall infrastructure cost of our broadband system at $64,498,905, with $32,249,452.50 Grant / $32,249,452.50 Loan and $10,000,000 equity investment. This gives us a cost of $830 per premise passed.

The State of Missouri has demonstrated that the average  “take rate" is 74.4%. At a modest subscriber take rate of 57%, we project 50,787 subscribers (including strategic and anchor institutes) by fourth quarter of the third year.

We have entered discussions with SYKES Enterprises, Inc., the third largest call center employer in the US and Canada, about bringing their Agent-At-Home program which would create innumerable jobs for disabled and single-parent families in southeastern Missouri. High speed Internet is crucial for the myriad self-employment opportunities the Internet offers. We estimate that a minimum of 810 jobs will be directly created within our project.  It would be impractical at this time to calculate the number of employment opportunities and benefits created indirectly with the implementation of our program. Telecommuting is a growing and viable option for the people of this region to virtually travel to work onboard a Broadband connection with the implementation of our proposal.

The community support for our project has proven to be tremendous. We have received over fifty letters of support from a myriad of community representatives and organizations.

Belinda Harris, our Missouri State Representative for the 110th District sent her letter of support and included that “Much of Southeast Missouri, including the 110th District, is disconnected from the rest of the world in the respect to satisfactory internet service.”

Rick Harnish, President of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association states in his support letter “ShowMe Broadband is a project that will extend Broadband services to thousands of citizens and businesses in the unserved Ozark Mountain region of Missouri. We recognize that while this terrain is challenging to provide Broadband services to, ShowMe has risen to the challenge to engineer a system to not only provide broadband but also to extend Public Safety services as well. These services are valuable and essential to further education, healthcare, public safety and reduce the digital divide that has prevented these services from being offered to this territory before.”

We are in receipt of letters of support from all ten of our proposed coverage areas County Commissioners.

Dr. Steven Kurtz, our local college's President supports our project because “the project includes areas in which our residents struggle for access to online programs and educational resources.”

Thomas P. Karl, the President of Parkland Health Center at Parkland Hospital wrote, “An examination of the proposal set forth by St. Louis Broadband reveals that the company is positioned appropriately to bring St. Francois County into the next era of data transmission and readiness.”

The President/COO of the Workforce Investment Board of Southeast Missouri “recognizes how important technology and connectivity are to the health, education, and general welfare of the people we serve” and urges support for our project.

St. Francois County Joint Communication Center of St. Francois County 911 expressed its support “without reservation” and stated “it is the efforts of us all that the people of our county be served.”

Additionally, local volunteer fire departments, city councils, and mayors have been quick to offer their support and have stressed the need for our project in their communities.

ShowMe Broadband has assembled an experienced team specializing in fiber and wireless Broadband technologies. We are dedicated to excellence and committed to serving the needs of all Southeastern Missouri.

Respectfully,

The ShowMe Broadband Team