Entrepreneur Rick Gunderson has made it his mission to provide reliable and affordable high-speed Internet service to businesses and homes in Mt. Sterling and Montgomery County.

“It is clear that the area needed high-speed Internet in order to move forward,” he says. “Without KyWifi, many people in the area would still be on dial-up access or satellite Internet.”

Faster Access for Homes, Businesses

KyWifi launched in 2004 in response to the lack of DSL and affordable telephone service in Montgomery County. The company grew slowly during its first three years until Gunderson and his wife, Carol, purchased the company in 2007. Computers and networking have made up Gunderson’s professional career for more than 30 years.

“I’ve been blessed with being involved with large-scale computer networking, dial-up Internet access, cable television, cellular telephone and broadband Internet including satellite, DSL and wireless,” he says.

KyWifi now provides broadband Internet service and satellite television to residents and businesses in Montgomery County and to parts of Bath, Bourbon and Clark counties. The company is the only fixed wireless broadband service in the area, and it is faster than any other local provider. KyWifi compares its speeds to cable and DSL Internet service.

Keeping Companies Wired

Before KyWifi, high-speed Internet access was scarce because of the county's low population density.

“Our county is so big, and people so far and wide apart that it is very expensive to get everyone wired,” Gunderson says, adding that big providers are too busy “fighting it out in the big cities” and have no reason to go to rural areas.

Having high-speed Internet access is critical to many businesses in the area. KyWifi provides Gateway Manufacturing Inc. with access to multiple T1 lines so the company will not lose Internet service if there is an issue with one line.

“This is critical because we do a lot of sales directly from our website,” says Doug Gessford, president and chief executive officer of Gateway. "Uptime must be high to receive such items as purchase orders, advance ship notices and invoices from large customers."

Gunderson says he is committed to utilizing the newest technology as it becomes available. In the four years under his helm, he has made many improvements to KYWifi; the greatest was moving the network operations center to the newest tower in the area, where fiber access is available.

“The second-best improvement was connecting nearly all of our broadcast points directly to the fiber via high-speed links, which enabled us to provide the capacity to keep up with the demand,” he says.