Closing the digital divide through advanced manufacturing and tooling development for commercialization of IsoTruss tower solutions.

Rural America has significantly less access to broadband networks and telecominfrastructure. The disparity between network coverage in rural areas versus urban areas isreferred to as the "digital divide." This divide limits those in Rural America in many ways; withthings as simple as inadequate or unreliable means of communication to the more seriousimplications of having limited to no access to adequate healthcare through telemedicine andbeing unable to receive messages in a timely manner from government response and emergencysystems. A driving force behind the digitaldivide is the difficulty and high cost ofdelivering installing and consistentlymaintaining infrastructure in rural areas withgreater distances between households andmountainous or forested terrain. Thesedifficulties make it harder to justify the useof traditional steel tower solutions for ruraltelecom infrastructure.IsoTruss towers ease the difficultiesinvolved with rural infrastructure deploymentby providing a tower that is 10X lighter doesnot corrode or rust lasts longer than steeltowers and uses a patented geometry that isthe most efficient design for the conditionsseen by telecom towers. These qualities ofIsoTruss towers make delivery installationand maintenance significantly less expensiveand more feasible with the terrain andequipment available in rural areas.SBIR Phase I development workresulted in a modified IsoTruss geometry thatused less material required lessmanufacturing time in prototype towers andFigure 1. IsoTruss tower installed in Cary Northimproved efficiency for the loading inCarolina with patented geometry.telecom towers. All of these improvementssignificantly reduced the cost of IsoTruss towers. Figure 1 shows a tower installed in Cary NorthCarolina in 2019 as part of the development in SBIR Phase I.The objectives of SBIR Phase II are to: (1) develop the manufacturing processes andtooling to build towers in line with market demand with the modifications discovered in Phase Iand (2) deploy three towers in strategic rural areas. The work in Phase II will develop themodified geometry beyond the prototype phase to create manufacturing methods and tooling toproduce full-scale towers in preparation for commercialization. The deployment of three moretowers will also contribute toward commercialization by promoting customer adoption and alsoproviding examples of towers in the field to future customers. The expected results of thedevelopment in Phase II are to have the manufacturing processes and tooling ready forproduction that meets market demand as well as to have strategic partners to pave the way for thecommercialization of IsoTruss tower solutions.