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I recall sitting here on a quiet winter evening a year ago near the end of 2009 reminiscing about the great strides we have made in providing many communities with much needed high speed rural internet service. I again return to my yearly practice of taking a look back to see where we have been. Many times we lose sight of where we have been because the road ahead seems so long and steep that it appears that it may not be a possible journey. We have had many struggles and tribulations this year with many things. Mother Nature has been putting the pressure on this year with once in a lifetime wind storms, the always enjoyable ice storm, and an exceptionally active thunderstorm season ( I believe we lost 7 sites to lighting strikes alone this year). Additional adversity came in June when it was announced by the Reedsburg Utility Commission that they had received a grant to build out fiber in a large majority of our existing service area (5.5 Million Dollars of government competition). Many of these blows have overshadowed the really good things that WIConnect Wireless accomplishes on a daily basis. I would like to point of many of the great things that we have accomplished in 2010 despite several adversities.
We have worked hard to build more redundancy into our network backbone. This allows us to route our internet services through multiple access points in case of power or other outages. We are continuing to add additional access points to allow for additional legs of our network to be redundant. Currently our Plain, Wisconsin, loop is under construction and we hope to finalize this loop in the next couple of months. This Network loop will give our Loganville to Plain links redundant paths back to our offices as well as internet connection redundancy. Our service areas in the Plain, Blackhawk, and Leland Communities will be available in the beginning of 2011.
We have worked hard to bring service to many communities in Richland County this year. The communities of Ithaca, Sextonville, Richland Center, and Twin Bluffs are now active. Our continued build out in Richland County has plans for additional Access points and service areas to include: Gotham, Lone Rock, Spring Green as well as North to Rock Bridge and Hub City communities. We hope to have these access points and service areas functional in the spring of 2011.
Our network monitoring services that help us to provide timely notification of outages has been a huge success in 2010. We are continuing to improve our monitoring and reporting capabilities to allow us to be even more proactive when there are outages or problems. We are also working on providing Battery Backup Power solutions to our main backbone access points.
Customer Service and keeping up with demand for our services has been a challenge for us in 2010. We have an excellent staff that is responsible for all aspects of the operation. This small staff that is responsible for all sales, installation, and support of our customers as well as all new build outs of additional access points. Many times we are challenged to keep up with all of the requests for service that are flowing in from our two county service area. We are working on streamlining our customer service experiences and using new customer management software to better manage our backlog. We are also rolling out a new referral program for 2011 that will benefit both the customer and the new customer with savings. The improved customer service will benefit everyone.
Our goal is to provide a one stop shop for all your communications needs. To meet that goal, we now offer installation and support for Dish Network Television services. This service along with our new home phone service solutions that we will be offering in 2011 will provide you with solid cost-effective solutions within your communications budget.
o We have successfully began our build out of Richland County
o We have surpassed over 40 live access points in both Sauk and Richland Counties
o Many of our Network Backbone Links are now redundant which allows us to keep customers connected even when we have power or other outages.
o We have grown to more than 340 households that we service. We have more than doubled our customers again this year.
o Addition Of Dish Network Retail Relationship
So with this year behind us and a renewed energy to continue to grow and provide True High Speed Rural Internet into the future, we begin looking at the great things that we are going to accomplish in 2011!
Customer Service is going to be the focus of our energies in 2011 Most of us on the WIConnect Staff are technical folks who are ready to respond in troubleshooting mode. If there is a problem with your service or with our network we are there ready to solve it. However, because we are always in that mode we sometimes leave our new customer follow up responsibilities neglected. We recognize that our new customers and customer referrals need to experience the exceptional customer service that our existing customers receive. An improved focus on customer service and customer experience will be our main focus of 2011.
We currently are planning network expansion and service areas in the following communities for 2011. Refer to our Website for more details on our planned build out areas.
We will be increasing available network bandwidth as we continue to grow and add additional customers. We expect to be near 50 MB of needed network bandwidth by the end of 2011. This bandwidth upgrade will keep up with the demand for bandwidth that our customers continue to exhibit. We will be upgrading our email services for WIConnect Wireless with its own dedicated mail server in 2011. We also will continue to improve our customer web portal which will allow for improved service and visibility into your account and service information.
Thanks again for your continued support for this Rural Wireless Broadband Initiative!
Dave Bangert
President
WIConnect Wireless