Zach Robinson, the just-over-30 president of Wave Internet Technologies LLC, a new wireless Internet company offering state-of-the-art, high-speed wireless Internet access to rural communities, has the Rolla community of advanced technological engineering in his blood.
Besides his stint at Saint Louis University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in finance, and another trek to Mizzou for masters in business administration, Robinson has lived in Rolla his entire life. Now, he’s found a way to give back technological opportunities to those who might presently be going without. Internet through cable or DSL providers is not available in some areas of Dent County.
Satellite service is available, but Wave’s Internet service differs from satellite in substantial ways, he says.
“Our service is nothing like satellite service,” said Robinson. “Satellite service is prone to latency. Our latency is better than or equal to cable or DSL. There are also no caps or limitations with our service. Our service will be superior to any satellite Internet connection.”
Wave recently purchased Accubak, a Salem company that provided satellite Internet service, and hopes to expand the coverage area.
Like cable and DSL, Wave Internet Technologies has a lot of packages available. From basic access to check email or Facebook, to the serious bandwidth requirements needed for high-performance online gaming, Wave Internet Technologies runs the gambit when it comes to meeting their customers’ needs, says Robinson.
“If we can't provide adequate service, we won't perform the installation. Period,” he said.
The service also doesn’t have many of the deficiencies that DSL and cable have, such as too many users draining the network’s bandwidth at once, which can cause slowdown at the end of the line.
Wave already has a sizable coverage area, and their recent acquisition of another ISP has only boosted the company’s range, Robinson says.
“We cover nearly all of Phelps County,” he said. “Our coverage right now extends as far north as Freeburg, Missouri, and as far south as Licking. As far east as Cuba, and as far west as Dixon. Basically we go in a big coverage circle among those four places.”
Wave Internet’s service is what’s known as fixed wireless. Robinson explains how it works:
“We install a little antenna there at someone's house, and that antenna would point at one of our towers, then a cable would come down from that customers antenna and plug into their router or computer. So we're using the airwaves. It's more similar to a cellphone than anything else, but we do put our own custom equipment on the towers. So it basically works just like DSL or cable Internet would, in terms of setup.”
Robinson was trying to find a niche for his company, and that’s reflected in the name change of his company from Wave Computers to Wave Internet Technologies.
The company has constructed at least 30 towers, but has also refitted traditional cell towers for their purposes. Either way, the end result is the same.
“Every situation is different, but if there seems to be an area that is underserved, or there’s a demand for our services, we try to get there,” Robinson said.
Wave Internet Technologies is a small company, and they like to keep it that way, by stationing their operations in house.
“My wife and I do things, but beyond that we have four employees,” Robinson said. “So technically, six of us kind of run the show.”
He and his wife also have two kids, so they might serve as interim employees when the time comes.
“We can tailor different packages to different consumers needs depending on what they need and what they want,” Robinson said. “Most residential customers we sell anywhere from 512 kilobits per second (Kbps) to 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps). We also have some customers who have bandwidth up to 50 Mbps. We have customers communicating with our towers in less than a millisecond. The equipment we use is capable of up to one gigabit per second (Gbps). I mean, there are extreme expansion capabilities.
