I’ve posted many times on here about my “day job” employer, Columbus Telephone Company. As one of the few independent telecoms left the nation, we’ve been bucking the trend and pioneering technology for over 107 years now. We had the first digital phone switch in 1986, were the first fiber-to-the-home provider in the state in 2005, and now we’re embarking on our next-generation network to bring our customer 1 Gbps ultra-broadband.
Most of you have probably heard about what Google Fiber is doing in the Kansas City market. They had a national contest to select a city or region to roll-out the company’s first ever fiber-to-the-home operation. Their operation did not start until 2012, however the headline that has come with it is the fact that they are already offering 1 Gbps Internet service, which is largely unheard of in the U.S.
Naturally, having a name like Google attached to their project has given them a vast amount of publicity, which I’d argue has paid off more for the Kansas City metro area than the actual fiber-to-the-home service. KC now has Internet start-ups forming in dumpy neighborhoods – right in residential homes. The proverbial “Silicon Prairie” is nothing new as Internet entrepreneurs seek out the low cost of living in the country’s mid-section and enjoy the (in many cases) much better broadband service than either coast can provide. Kansas City, however, was not in on the action until Google trumpeted their horn and laid the foundation for ultra broadband, so we’re getting in on the action.
For us, we don’t need Google. Back in 2003 when we announced our original fiber-to-the-home imitative, we were one of only a handful of companies nationwide embarking on a FTTH network, and we’re about 99% sure we were the only company in the nation to have a zero-copper network. So by today’s standards, our eight year old network is better than what 99.8% of U.S. households currently have. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough for us.
Today we formally announced our next-generation FTTH network. For marketing purposes, we’re calling it Fiber 2.0. Our new network is enabling us to offer the ultra broadband speeds that we feel are a necessity to keeping our area and customers ahead of the curve. Once completed later this year, we’ll be able to offer the same 1 Gbps speeds that Google is trumpeting in KC, plus position us to continue expanding our broadband offerings for several years to come.
As the company’s marketing guy, I’m totally geeked to have the opportunity to tout our new services. It is no stretch for us to say that, in a few months, you’ll be able to stack our company’s network up against any city in the world, and no shame will be felt on our end. It truly is world-class, meaning it is a marketer’s dream. I don’t have to spin this – it literally is the best and we have the brand and the plan to make everyone aware of that.
Our small company is proof of my theory in business: when passionate folks are running it, success comes naturally. We don’t dwell on specific metrics of success. We have a corporate strategy to provide the best product and best customer experience. All decisions go back to that one metric and said decisions are made by people that really do care about the company. There are no “silos” or disjointed “accounting has goal X, marketing has goal Y” mockery – we all rally around the same goal and I’m convinced more than every that is the key to our success.
Nick D. Saporito 