TCT shares fiber updates at chamber of commerce luncheon

At the Lovell Area Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon held on April 21 at the Mustang Cafe, TCT’s chief executive officer Richard Wardell gave an update on their fiber optic upgrade status.

“Having started the project last summer and basically going through the entire town and replacing all of the copper, that is pretty exciting for us to have the ability to do that,” Wardell said. “We divided the town into different serving areas, began splicing and have already gotten several customers connected.”

He reported that by the end of summer, TCT should have everybody in town capable of getting fiber and will be encouraging the conversion.

“This is the future, and we are excited to be able to provide that to our communities,” he said.

Other key team members of TCT present at the luncheon were Ben Walker from the engineering department and Kandice Dooley and Brandon Wardell from marketing.

Wardell said there is evidence-based information that TCT’s state-of-the-art network is second to none, and compared to other service competitors, TCT was preferred every time.

“Because fiber-optic is light, it cannot be interfered with by other electronic devices,” Wardell explained as to how there will be less interruptions in clarity based off of external issues.

The officials realize that it is a work in progress, but the project has been moving along quite well in town since last August.

When looking back at how far services have grown in such a quick amount of time, Wardell said, “Back when I first started, we were selling second lines for your dial-up internet so you could be on the phone and internet at the same time. So, the evolution is pretty amazing, miraculous even, the amount of data we used 25 years ago (compared to) today is mind-blowing and the technology that has come with that.”

TCT crews, along with techs from HomeTech Solutions, have begun connecting customers wishing to upgrade their services.

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At the beginning of the luncheon, Cindy Asay from Wild Edge gave a short commercial promoting the collaborative effort local retail business owners are beginning in hopes of rejuvenating activity downtown.

“We are wanting to get our retail businesses a little more action and excitement around it downtown,” Asay said, “hoping to increase the shopping experience for our customers.”

The group effort decided to call their efforts “Launch Lovell.”

“There is a lot of excitement about this and a lot of enthusiasm behind it,” she added. “We want to keep coming up with ideas and plan events for downtown shopping. We believe if there are more events happening there, people will stay there longer.”

The group was to meet again on Monday, April 28, at 6:30 p.m. at the Lovell Area Chamber of Commerce building and invite community members to join and give input.