Chris Cooper: Connecting the Community

Chris Cooper, one of the founders and the Managing Partner, of Intelliwave wasnt planning on running an internet provider when he moved to Athens County. However from its humble beginnings he has helped Intelliwave grow into a premiere provider of wireless internet in Southeastern Ohio.

Attracted to Athens

Chris and his wife were living in Columbus and were simply looking to move to a relaxed place with vibrant culture and plenty of space for a farm.

“We wanted a community that fit our personalities, lifestyle and outlook,” Chris recalls. After several trips to the Athens County they felt the area was exactly what they were looking for. Simultaneously, Chris parents were looking to expand their paging business to the Southeastern Ohio region so the move was a natural fit.

“What I like, especially where I live, you’ve got this blending of Appalacian and university cultures that just works. You look at the music scene or the restaurants here and you realize that there are some great places in the area.”

Soon after opening the pager office in 1995 Chris began to read a lot about the expansion of the internet. “It seemed like the internet was something that was really gonna take off,” Chris recalls. “We realized that there were no dial-up ISPs with local numbers in the area so, we launched Eureka Networks which grew quite rapidly over the next couple years.”

Eureka Networks was the stepping stone to a much larger venture, though it would take several years to be realized. In 1999 the ISP was sold to a group of venture capitalists from Charleston. “We had non-competes that we had to satisfy so that held us out of the industry for a couple years. So we ramped up our farm and started raising goats.”

The Foundations

In 2002 Tom Kostohryz, who had been one of their major clients at Eureka, invited Chris and his wife to lunch to talk about an idea for a wireless internet service provider (WISP). Initially brought on to the Board to help steer activities, they began running day to day operations in 2003.

“We started off with a single cell site here in Athens, out on Radford Road,” Chris states. “From that one tower and transmitter we have grown it to nearly 40 sites now.”

Due to the rural makeup of Athens County there are areas that dont have access to cable or wire-based broadband. Intelliwave provides a unique solution, allowing anyone within their coverage area access to high speed internet access. Broadband access is a requirement for doing business. “We sell everything from a 768k/1 meg connections all the way up to enterprise clients that are buying 20 or 30 megs from us,” Chris says.

“Wireless broadband service is especially advantageous in areas with low population density,” Chris states “We can put up one location which will cover about 30 square miles.” He continued by pointing out that the infrastructure cost that allows them to service a couple hundred homes would only net a traditional wired service 10% as many customers. “If you are looking at a road where there are 10 houses, statistically if you plow cable only 4 or 5 of them will buy broadband, the numbers just dont add up,” Chris asserts.

Connecting the Future

In 2010 Intelliwave won a grant for 2.3 million dollars which is being used to double the size of their network. When the expansion is complete they will cover more than 25,000 homes. “We know that the users are going to continue demanding more and more bandwidth. People want to check their Facebook pages and watch streaming movies on Netflix. While we currently rival cable internet speeds, the next generation networks we deploy will provide a large boost to the bandwidth we will provide,” Chris concludes.