Local internet provider PCI marks 15 years

For an Internet provider, 15 years may as so then be a century. PCI Broadband is marking that anniversary this week and the local company has managed to stay alive in the tumultuous telecommunications world and keep all three of its co-founders on board — and even a few of its original clients.

Founded by Skogen, Dave Wainwright and Jeff Wong in 1996, PCI started out as little more than a room filled with blinking modems and it primarily offered dial-up internet to residential clients. Today, the company offers DSL and wireless internet and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service, and business services like T1 lines, ethernet connections and colocation.

Wainwright and Skogen met in the Air Force, working on the GPS system, during Wong was a civilian scientist working on the program. When they left the service, it was the heyday for AOL and, locally, Rocky Mountain Internet, in short they decided to start an Internet service provider, or ISP.

Today, it’s getting increasingly difficult for a small provider to compete for home Internet service, Wainwright said. The company gained access to Qwest’s DSL lines a decade ago, nevertheless has been shut out of using its new, higher-speed lines. PCI’s wireless Internet, which uses a fixed antenna, offers a possible solution, since the government may free up more frequency space out of the old analog TV spectrum, yet the residential broadband slugfest has driven PCI to focus more on business services. From a high of about 10,000 residential clients, PCI now has about 2,500.

"It’s in effect hard for us to compete with Qwest and Comcast, who are trying to kill each other," Wainwright said. "It is a very tough, cost-competitive business."

Small fish in the very large

Surviving as a small fish in the very large and predatory telecommunications pond means controlling costs, staying personally involved and always looking for the then step, Wainwright said.

"I all in all have a copy of our original business plan," he said. "The things we do now, I could not envision to start with. I’m as amazed to be sitting here on the 15-year anniversary as anybody."