In recent years, a variety of government broadband funding programs have emerged to address what many people living in small towns knew long before: Rural markets were both under-served and under-appreciated by big technology companies, and not just for broadband, but for just about any technology product or service that comes to mind.
In fact, way back in 1999 it was so obvious that rural areas like the town of Buhler, Kansas, could not get the same level of computer support that was offered in major metropolitan markets that a group of students in the senior class at Buhler High School decided to do something about it. They formed IdeaTek, a computer services company that more than 20 years and a few changes in strategic direction later is now rolling out fiber-based broadband services all across the state of Kansas.
One of those students was Daniel Friesen, who in addition to being a co-founder is now managing partner and chief innovation officer at IdeaTek Telcom, which is still based in Buhler, Kansas, and still focused on delivering to Kansans what they are not getting from tech giants with more well-known names.
“The focus back then and since has always been on some underserved area of rural tech,” he told Fierce Telecom. “In Kansas and across rural parts of America, there seems to always be markets and services that are under-served. We could have focused on any segment. Technology was just our passion, and so we started out doing computer repair work.”
By 2005, IdeaTek pivoted into providing internet services, initially dial-up and later DSL and by 2007 a small number of fiber-to-the-home connections in five small Kansas towns. In 2011, IdeaTek built its first fiber connection for a Verizon Wireless tower and latched onto the booming business of helping to spread wireless coverage across Kansas by providing fiber-based backhaul. In 2015, IdeaTek sold its successful fiber-to-the-tower business and pivoted again to addressing the need for broadband services – and better broadband deals – for Kansas customers.
“We just stepped over the traditional telephone wires or cable systems and went straight to fiber-optic deployments, building fiber in these rural towns where most of them didn't even have a single high-speed broadband provider,” Friesen said. “We went by the slogan of ‘internet freedom’ because many rural towns were either abandoned by or enslaved by an incumbent provider that didn’t care about their needs. We stamped our service out across these small towns and connected them together with our fiber backbone, and then used that backbone to connect cell towers in rural areas.”
Still largely self-funded though its first decade and a half in business, IdeaTek in 2017 earned its first broadband grant, a $6 million award from the Federal Communications Commission to fund a three-town fiber project. In 2020, it acquired a wireless broadband firm called Skylink Wireless, and earned another $13.7 million in federal funding, which it bundled together with $3.5 million in private investment to provide a mix of fiber connections and 100 Mbps fixed wireless acess to about 13,000 homes in about 50 markets of various sizes across Central and Western Kansas.
Because IdeaTek had a long history of building out its business organically before government broadband funding programs came along, Friesen feels the company is better prepared than others to compete for both more funding and additional customers.
“We had done self-funded builds in all of these rural areas, and that gave us a perspective on what it took to provide service in the rural under-served space, so I think that prepared us well for subsidies when they came out, and especially the second generation of subsidies that were competitive, rather than granted by default to the incumbent,” he said.
The growth in government broadband funding programs, as well as increasing pressure on bigger broadband providers to expand into new markets, means that IdeaTek is no longer alone in realizing the under-served potential in rural broadband markets. But the company for now has no plans to expand outside of Kansas.
“We intend to continue to grow our footprint and our customer count in Kansas, hopefully by tenfold in the next five years,” Friesen said, "Kansas is where we started. It's where our owners live, and it's where employees live. So, we know our state, and we know there's still a lot of work to do here.”
Throughout almost 24 years and despite some changes, IdeaTek has stayed true to its roots, and so has Friesen. Along the company’s journey, he began a political career, serving as Mayor of Buhler for 11 years after being voted in at the age 26 as the youngest Mayor in the town’s history, and also has served as a commissioner for Reno County, which surrounds Buhler. He said he will not be lured into a bigger political career, mostly because helping IdeaTek move forward is more rewarding and more fun, and he feels that the company can still make a difference for its customers.
“Tech trends it's kind of like fashion trends,” he said. “They start kind of in metro areas on the coasts and work their way in. Whatever technology you’re talking about could be 10 years behind in rural areas, and a lot of the difference is related to cost of deployment to lower densities. A lot of times we have been able to add a lot of value to our customers through either providing a service to them for the very first time or providing lower cost service, and there is still more than we can offer to these markets that another company can’t because their traditional business case can’t make it work. The difference is we will innovate to make it work.”