The story of how Wilson’s municipal fiber network, Greenlight, won over one of its strongest critics illustrates how community networks support and benefit local businesses. Tina Mooring is the Manager of Computer Central in Wilson and was an opponent of the city building a fiber optic network to provide a choice beyond the incumbent cable and DSL companies, both of which were national carriers.
“We were fearful,” says Mooring, when asked about her feelings when the City of Wilson first announced its plan to build out a community-wide fiber to the home network. Reselling DSL connections leased from the incumbent telephone company was Computer Central’s bread and butter. “We repaired computers and we resold DSL…and we were supposed to take a ‘leap of faith’ that the City did not want to put us out of business.” Mooring was outspoken in her belief that Wilson was taking the wrong step.
But after a few years passed by, Mooring’s feelings about the municipal broadband network changed. Because of Greenlight, Tina’s company found new opportunities in offering new services with the greatly enhanced connectivity. In going to conferences and speaking with her clients, she was repeatedly asked if Computer Central could offer services she did not know existed: large data backup services, cloud services, and disaster recovery. Full document and file image backups meant accessing the kind of bandwidth, particularly upstream, that just was not available in the community from the slower cable and DSL connections. Greenlight gave her business plenty of new opportunities:
“I’d say our revenues have increased from 30 and 100 percent over last year’s” because of Greenlight’s next-generation connections. Computer Central’s clients access the upstream and downstream gigabit symmetrical capacity that Greenlight offers throughout the community and her company supplies the value added services on top of that internet pipe: data backup services, various hosting and managed services, security and disaster recovery. Mooring has switched 23 customers in Wilson County to Greenlight because these private sector businesses wanted the hosting and data disaster recovery services they otherwise could not access.
Tina’s voice grew serious when she explained one example of how meaningful these new services are to businesses in Wilson. “We had a big tornado go through…everyone was hit including the car dealership across the street from my office. Cars were upside down and thrown down the street. But because of Greenlight’s fiber capacity, I was able to get the dealership” right back on its feet. Time is money, and Greenlight, she says, “is very fast.”
Mooring noted how her business suffers from North Carolina’s state law that limits Greenlight’s service area to only Wilson County. (As of the writing of this article, the FCC voted to preempt that state law, but the state of North Carolina has sued the FCC in an effort to reverse the order and prevent North Carolina municipalities from providing gigabit broadband services.)
“It’s the law itself that’s bad for the private sector … it is hurting the private sector,” she explained. “All my clients” in the six counties surrounding Wilson would benefit if Greenlight could serve them.” Mooring adds, “I have CPA clients who tell me about their clients asking them: ‘When can they get Greenlight,’ when they hear what my CPA accomplishes with our services.” CPAs, medical offices, supply houses with medical offices, clients who need metro-ethernet connections, small businesses and small municipalities all would benefit from gaining access to Greenlight” she emphasized. “Right now they are limited on the services that we can provide them due to bandwidth constraints of the current incumbent providers.”
Finally, Tina emphasized that access to world class broadband speed is just part of the picture. According to Ms. Mooring, “It’s also an issue about the efficiency, the responsiveness, and the customer service… you know who you are doing businesses with because your families have known each other for decades.” She noted the difficulty she experiences just to get a call returned from the large local incumbents serving the community. “There is much more latency…and like I said, lost time is lost money,” she added. “I want Greenlight to grow, so Computer Central can grow.”
Community networks like Greenlight create entrepreneurial opportunities for local businesses like Computer Central to boost local economies. Firms like Computer Central can help other area businesses be more efficient and competitive – but they need to have an infrastructure provider in town that is providing high capacity, reliable connectivity and excellent customer service.
This article is apart of MuniNetworks. The original piece can be found here
