Steve Carson, the owner of Skamokawa Internet Services, never intended to launch an ISP.
In the fall of 2017, Steve and his wife were camping at Vista Park in Skamokawa, Washington, when they found a house for sale on the Columbia river. The house needed a remodel but the view was amazing. They began musing about what it would take to relocate their businesses and home to this quaint town.
Steve remembers thinking,
“We could move here and work remotely if there was good Internet.”
Everything seemed to be falling into place for them to make the leap and move to Skamokawa for the rural lifestyle they desired—everything except a broadband connection. They could not find a service provider that could provide the bandwidth they needed to run Steve’s IT firm and his wife’s interior decorating business. Much of Wahkiakum County, like many other rural areas of Washington, lacked affordable high-speed Internet services.
Undeterred, the entrepreneurial pair started researching how to obtain the Internet service they needed. Steve found out that NoaNet fiber was only about 400 feet from their maybe-soon-to-be home. Steve called up NoaNet to find out if he could get service. He learned that state restrictions prohibited NoaNet from serving homeowners directly but that they supplied wholesale services to Internet Service Providers. Steve promptly asked his neighbors if they would be interested in signing up if he launched an ISP company.
Steve had a dozen customers before thinking of the business name.
In the late summer of 2018, Steve launched Skamokawa Internet Services; a fiber-fed ISP supplying fixed wireless internet services in Skamokawa, Washington. Since then, Steve has invested in additional infrastructure and expanded high-speed wireless connections to serve 75 grateful customers.
Skamokawa Internet Services utilizes NoaNet’s lit broadband product to resell services to homes and businesses. The network in Wahkiakum County has separate redundant paths in and out of the area, which Steve has seen the benefit of several times in the past two years.
“NoaNet’s infrastructure allowed me to bring services to Skamokawa that were desperately needed. It has been great to get to live and work where we want to. It wouldn’t have been possible without a good broadband connection.”
To learn more about Skamokawa Internet Services including live webcams of the area, visit them online at www.skamokawa.net