Some Wendover residents received an unpleasant reminder on how dependent they now are on the internet when one major provider went down for most of the business day last Thursday.
“We had to close,” said A & I Hardware owner Arby Stone our credit card readers could not function.
“Everything in our office is now wireless,” said West Wendover Recreation district Secretary Jamey Richardson. “We couldn’t even use our printers.”
The shut down apparently affected only user of Rise Broad Band which recently acquired the Wendover system which acquired it from Keyon communications which in tern bought it from Wells Rural Electric.
The original wrecwireless was the first high speed internet service offered in Wendover and Wells in 2003.
Considered too backward and rural and a money loser for high speed web traffic, internet usage in Wendover and Wells was restricted to the agonizingly slow dial up until WREC entered the picture.
And just as electricity changed the lives of rural Nevadans a generation ago, WREC’s foray into the realm of high speed internet changed the lives of their current member/customers. Because of WREC homes and business were able to take full advantage of the information super highway and the amount of usage WREC was able to develop brought competition.
This most recent outage affected local government disproportionately primarily because of the wrecwireless origin.
However since with every transfer of ownership customers have complained the service is not getting better.
A reason for a possible decline is the sheer size of the company. According to its website, Rise Broadband is located in Los Angeles California and provides service throughout rural and suburban sections of the Midwest, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions of the country. Rise reported Annual Revenue of $125 million with 800 employees and Wendover is a very small drop in a very large bucket.
Rise’s principal competitor in Wendover is CentraCom Coomunitions a 125 plus year old family operated company out of Fairview, Utah. During its 125th anniversary two years ago CentraCom CEO Eddie Cox credited his company’s longevity to its customer service ethic.
“We are small enough to realize every single one of our clients is important.” Cox said
