Broadband providers ride boom in subscribers
Times are good for John Marsden and Chris Cappuccio.
Marsden and Cappuccio, of Bend-based rural broadband
Internet provider Yellowknife Wireless, said the
company's subscriber base has at least doubled annually
since its inception two years ago.
"Things are going really well," said
Marsden, president of Yellowknife.
"And there's no sign of it stopping."
Over at BendBroadband, officials say business is
equally thriving, driving up the workload for company
executives like president and CEO Amy Tykeson.
"I try not to work on the weekends,"
said Tykeson, who has two teenage children to tend
to on top of her work at the local cable provider.
"But I always have more work at home."
For high-speed Internet service providers in Central
Oregon, Tykeson's and Marsden's experiences are
the rule rather than the exception.
The region's population boom since 2000 has flushed
the market with consumers, many of whom came from
bigger cities and were expecting the convenience
of broadband Internet service they were getting
in metropolitan areas.
"Being in Central Oregon is a major factor
in our growth," Tykeson said. "I don't
think we would be standing here if our system was
in, say, Flint, Mich."
Other providers echo Tykeson's sentiments.
"We've definitely seen an increase in subscribers
for high-speed Internet (locally)," said Judy
Peppler, Oregon state president for phone giant
Qwest Communications International Inc. "We
consider Bend one of the growth markets in the state,
and it's certainly one we're focusing on."
Qwest, the primary land-line phone service provider
in Central Oregon, also offers DSL high-speed Internet
service here.
The growing broadband subscriber base in Central
Oregon, however, is increasingly attracting new
providers to the market in the last year. As
such, all the high-speed Internet providers here
are evolving their services to maintain and grow
their share of the local market.
Among the developments in the broadband sector
in Central Oregon recently are:
-- Kirkland, Wash.-based Clearwire US LLC began
its wireless high-speed Internet service in Bend,
Redmond, Sisters, Prineville and Madras in December
2005;
-- BendBroadband launched its Internet-based phone
service in January 2006;
-- Qwest announced new bundles of its phone and
Internet service, offering television signals through
an agreement with satellite provider DIRECTV, in
May 2006.
BendBroadband, Qwest and Clearwire all currently
offer high-speed Internet and phone services through
their networks, pushing to become all-in-one telecommunication
providers for the growing Central Oregon broadband
consumer base as consumers increasingly demand billing
convenience.
"If you look across the United States, that's
really becoming the trend where people get it all
on one bill," Qwest's Peppler said. "People
enjoy that convenience."
In turn, the availability of high-speed Internet
service in Central Oregon may have played a hand
in fostering the population and business growth
locally, said BendBroadband's Tykeson.
"I think our launch of (broadband) Internet
services (in 1997) certainly contributed to the
growth here," she said, noting that a significant
number of local residents telecommute, or use high-speed
links as their communication avenues with their
workplaces in cities like Seattle and San Francisco.
"Some people may not have chosen Central Oregon
as their new home had we not have that service in
place."
Clearwire officials are unable to comment, as the
company is currently in the process of going public
and are prohibited by federal rules to discuss the
market situation here.
But Clearwire's presence as a wireless broadband
provider in Central Oregon cities has actually boosted
the industry's public profile in rural regions as
well, said Yellowknife's Marsden.
As such, the increasing competition locally has
benefited rural providers like Yellowknife and Bend-based
Webformix, which offer broadband service to residents
who may live outside the service range of bigger
industry players.
"One of our main challenges is reaching people
initially," Marsden said. "A lot of people
don't realize our services are available, but they
would go to Clearwire and find out they're not in
its range of service areas, and many of them would
come to us."
Central Oregon's spread-out growth pattern, with
areas like Crooked River Ranch, was one of the key
reasons why Yellowknife was launched in the first
place, another company official said.
"We knew that, if we didn't get started, we
would miss our chance at that market," said
Chris Cappuccio, who manages Yellowknife's operations
with Marsden.
Moving forward, all the providers are making new
pushes for more marketshare.
BendBroadband, which serves Bend, Redmond and Sisters,
is focusing on providing more high-definition content
to cater to a growing group of HDTV viewers locally.
In addition, Tykeson said her company is continuously
filling in gaps in the cable network in new urban
areas that may have been sparsely populated only
a year earlier.
"The way Bend and Redmond is building up,
some of the areas where there wasn't enough demand
before, there is that demand now," she said,
noting BendBroadband just added a line to an outlying
area near Sisters.
For Qwest, the telecommunications company is planning
to open a retail location in Bend in the next year,
Peppler said.
"If we can find a suitable location, we would
like to implement a kiosk or a store in a mall so
consumers can walk up and find out more about our
services," she said, adding that Qwest will
also continue to push its package deal prices, which
contributed to a 60 percent increase in subscribers
in Medford last year, according to Qwest.
Rural providers like Yellowknife also aren't standing
still. Marsden said his company plans to add Internet-based
phone service to its list of services in the near
future.
"With the speed at which technology evolves,
deciding what hardware to upgrade to is a challenge,"
he said. "It's a constant process. But our
business has expanded exponentially here from where
we started, and competition hasn't pinched our growth."
