Visionary Broadband is a Gillette-based ISP designed to connect rural communities across the tri-state region. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the company has grown to approximately 200 employees in several large offices in and out of the Cowboys staff.
Brian Worthen, CEO of Visionary Broadband, said: “Visionary has always been proud to expand its presence in smaller communities and we were the first to bring broadband to places like Newcastle’s Wright and Lanchester.” the community says “hey i want a better service here, i need an option, i want an alternative or i need broadband”. to their territory for development. “
Since Visionary was first launched in a basement by three Gillette alumni in December 1994, their business has grown exponentially. They currently reach over 100 communities in Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana and are actively recruiting as they continue their mission to connect more communities with a high level of excellence. high speed internet.
“Currently, most of our fiber is based at Gillette, Casper, Cheyenne, which I call the central points of the network,” Worthen said. “We’ve just played 100 shows in Sheridan, Gillette, Cheyenne and finally Denver to expand our reach. We’ve just completed an expansion in 2018. Thankfully COVID traffic has only increased as a result and we’re actually ready to so we always strive to be one step ahead and to do this we need to make sure we have fiber resources for these large communities.”
Fiber optic cable is one of the primary means of delivering service to the public, and Worthen said it is sometimes leased from another company and sometimes built by Visionary itself.
“For example, Lusk, we have fiber to the end, and for reliability, we have a microwave oven or a wireless router,” he explained. “Ranchester and Dayton, we feed them fiber. Lagrange, Wyoming, we feed them fiber [and] Yoder. So it is not necessary that the smaller the city, the less technology. provides fiber to 300 homes, and then, if there is no second fiber route or alternative outside the city, we will use a licensed microwave link in the other direction for reasons of reliability.”
Very remote areas, such as those with only a few dozen people, can be completely served by wireless connections due to the prohibitive cost of laying fiber optic cables. But grants can help this process, as was the case with the COVID Relief Fund under the CARES Act, allowing them to expand services in areas that would not otherwise be economically feasible. Additional assistance was provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which authorized cable laying to Lusk, as well as projects in Sublette and Sheridan counties.
“That’s a total of $42.5 billion [and] in Wyoming alone, $109 million through ARPA [American Rescue Program Act] for broadband through BEAD [Broadband Capital, Access and Deployment], that’s probably over 200 million dollars [and] company you have to be ready,” Watson said. “We took on this responsibility and said, ‘We will be locals trying to make a difference through these means.’
Providing personalized service is integral to the success and expansion efforts, a fact that Worthen and the company’s employees are proud of. This has even caused some customers to stay away from large enterprise vendors.
“Visionary has always prided itself on doing everything in-house: we do our own technical support, email, and customer service ourselves,” he explained. “When someone calls Visionary, one of our employees picks up the phone.”
Expansion efforts are ongoing across the tri-state service area to connect communities ranging from a few hundred to several thousand or more. Wyoming is currently one of the worst states in the US in terms of internet speed and accessibility.
Post time: Feb-17-2023
