When Ozark native Travis Allen needed to increase the Internet bandwidth to his home in 2005, he didn’t turn to a phone or cable company. He purchased a $1,300 satellite receiver and got permission to attach it to a nearby water tower, connecting him to the Starband Satellite Internet network and creating a high-speed wireless connection for himself and a few neighbors.
Wireless could be the latest evolutionary stage for all things Internet. Dubbed WISPs, wireless incarnations of Internet Service Providers are popping up across the country, extending access beyond the reach of cable and fiber-optic phone lines.
Recognizing the opportunity, Allen formed TA Highspeed in 2005, first operating as a reseller for satellite services. He soon found that satellite Internet – though an improvement over dial-up – was still a slower alternative than DSL, cable or T1. Research eventually led him to the current platform, which operates on Motorola Canopy network technology, and delivers secure, military-grade communications signals via a small receptor attached to a home’s existing radio antenna.
Several acquisitions of small wireless operations followed, and in 2011, the company purchased Billings-based Total Wireless and rebranded as Total Highspeed LLC. While declining to disclose company revenues, Allen says three-year growth has remained steady at 25 percent annually, and Total Highspeed now serves 4,300 residential and business customers across 22 counties.
On the mapTotal Highspeed’s Nixa office lobby is dominated by a surveyor’s map of southwest Missouri. Color-coded pushpins represent tower locations and types, with strings of corresponding hues indicating the wireless relay lines that form the company’s wireless framework.
“Of our 110 total tower [transmission] locations in the region, 50 are attached to existing municipal water towers,” Allen says.
With an average tower lease rate of $400 a month, the company also has found willing partners in nonworking farms, where the company’s small devices attach to empty grain silos.
Total Highspeed doesn’t offer residential service in areas where Mediacom operates. Instead, focus is on the dozens of small rural communities dotting its lobby map and the “big pockets in between cities,” says Allen, pointing to a dead zone just north of Nixa.
“Suddenlink ends right here, at the edge of Nixa, and Mediacom stops just south of Springfield,” he says. “A lot of those pockets exist in southwest Missouri. We are in business to fill the niche of high-speed Internet for people in areas where there hasn’t ever been this kind of access.”
According to the Federal Communications Commission, of the 19 million Americans without fixed access to high-speed Internet, three-quarters of them reside in rural areas. One in four rural residents nationwide are still restricted to dial-up Internet access – despite billions of dollars in federal funds supporting the FCC’s goal of “universal broadband deployment” in all areas of the U.S. by the year 2020.
Allen’s cousin, Evan Allen, a sales and marketing specialist for the company, spends much of his time on the road, visiting small towns across the Ozarks. While he focuses on promoting residential service, he notes most businesses with high-speed access pay premium prices to a sole provider in their respective areas.
“These enterprise-class providers have been in business for so long that they haven’t had to price very competitively,” Evan Allen says. “We’re just coming in, providing service on a totally different platform.”
Travis Allen said the average monthly cost for Total Highspeed’s commercial clients is around $500 with a 36-month contract.
Foot in the doorBusinesses represent 10 percent of Total Highspeed’s rural clients, compared to 30 percent in urban areas. Allen expects the percentages to balance out as companies consider wireless service, which he says offers 30 to 60 percent cost savings, minimal equipment investments and speeds of up to 20 megabits per second, or around 10 times faster than DSL.
Total Highspeed also is getting a foot in the door by providing “co-primary services” to some businesses, standing ready as the backup provider should problems occur with the customer’s main ISP.
“Even our small office,” Allen says, “would come to a dead stop if our Internet service went down. There are many, many larger businesses that simply can’t afford to be offline.”
The product has attracted such clients as Porch Pig Productions in Brookline and Jim Coker’s Rogersville Pharmacy and South Oaks Pharmacy.
Rick’s Automotive in Springfield converted to Total Highspeed last week. Owner Rick Hughlett says that although the initial speed tests show “a huge improvement” from the company’s previous T1 connection, his choice was based on other factors, too. “Travis actually climbs the towers himself,” Hughlett says. “I really appreciate the hands-on way that he has built his company. The fact that he’s increased my Internet speed by 500 percent and saved me money at the same time was actually secondary. First and foremost, I made my choice because of how the company is run.”
Total Highspeed’s targeted expansion branches out from the highways on the lobby map like digital capillaries.
Communities along U.S. Highway 60 have been fertile territory, and the company recently secured its eastern-most tower 100 miles away in Mountain View. Further north on the Interstate 44 corridor, coverage around Lebanon is expected to double in the next year with six new towers in Laclede County.On his desk in Nixa, Allen keeps a glass jug with a peeling Coca-Cola label. The jug, which contains a caramel-colored gallon of decades-old syrup mix, reminds him of how in 1889 – through ignorance of contract stipulations – Coke’s president unwittingly signed into perpetuity an agreement that capped his product price at 5 cents a glass, effectively killing the business plan to sell larger bottles. That faded jug is a reminder, Allen says, to remain adaptable in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.
“They had to switch gears,” he says. “Since they couldn’t increase prices, they had to figure out a way to sell a hundred times more soda at 5 cents per glass. They did, and look at them now.”[[In-content Ad]]
