So far, 2001 has been a year of incredible growth for wireless Internet provider TowerStream, beginning with the company’s inception in January and continuing with rapid expansions and new partnerships.
In just the last five months, the company has expanded its wireless broadband network to encompass the Boston-area’s Rt. 128 ring (including Boston, Quincy, Burlington, Needham and Waltham) and Rhode Island’s densest commercial areas (including Providence, Newport, Cranston, Warwick and Westerly).
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The company now has “virtually seamless coverage of Boston through the 128 ring,” TowerStream Chief Executive Officer Philip Urso said. “We can reach a huge percentage of businesses within that area. We can reach the majority of businesses in Rhode Island as well. It’s exciting to have a network of that size.”
TowerStream began service to small and medium-sized businesses in January, signed its 100th business customer in September, and hopes to increase its service area to include all of New England’s major cities by the end of 2002.
TowerStream provides businesses ‘always-on,’ high-speed Internet via a broadband fixed wireless network powered by Cisco Systems technology.
The company was founded by Urso and TowerStream Chief Technology Officer Jeff Thompson. These two were also the founders of what was once Rhode Island’s largest Internet service provider (ISP), eFortress. eFortress was sold to Internet giant Earthlink earlier this year.
In August, TowerStream announced a partnership with Atrion Networking Corporation of Warwick to provide around-the-clock technical support to its customers.
Atrion provides network operations center (NOC) services (technical support and network intrusion protection) to TowerStream from its headquarters in Warwick.
With Atrion taking on its customer service duties, TowerStream will be able to “keep adding markets without having to worry about that side of it. Atrion is very equipped to deal with that,” said TowerStream Chief Technology Officer Jeff Thompson.
Urso said he does not see the country’s current economic climate as an obstacle to TowerStream’s future growth.
In the first 10 days of September, he said, TowerStream signed 11 new companies for service; the second 10 days saw no new clients, but “then things started to pick up again. In the last 10 days of the month, it picked up again.”
The nature of TowerStream’s services (wireless) makes installation quicker and easier, and, ultimately, service less expensive – Urso said sometimes by as much as half.
“A lot of businesses are looking closely at their expenses right now,” he said.
Over the past year, TowerStream has expanded from a company of two to 22 employees, and, despite the Ocean State’s reputation for being one where recruiting – particularly in the IT arena – can be a challenge, Urso said the expansion has not been a problem.
“We have a good, solid core of engineers,” he said. “We know a lot of IT talent in Rhode Island – we seem to find a lot of it.”
That, coupled with Rhode Island’s growing renown as a destination state, has proved to be an asset.
“It’s a great place to do business – great quality of life,” Urso said. “I think it’s actually helped us recruit.”
And his partner agrees.
“The Big Dig, the commute who wants to be in Boston? There’s plenty of talent here,” said Thompson.
