December 21, 2005 Gillette, WY -- Broadband services provider Visionary Communications now allows customers to house highly-customized Web and data storage servers within the company's Gilette data center, which it calls its 'fiber hotel.'
Customers with in the data center include AgTerra Technologies, a company that allows farmers to track and monitor crop production, and eSkyWorld, a company operating a server that provides virtual flight training and an air traffic control school.
"A third customer of ours hosts their data here, even though they have an operation in New Mexico," explains Brian Worthen, president of Visionary. "This customer tells us the infrastructure in our neck of the woods is better than Albuquerque, a town of 500,000 people."
The remote data center is connected to the Internet via fiber cabling and a redundant microwave radio connection. The provider says the data center employs an under-utilized north-south fiber route traversing Montana and Wyoming.
"We'd like to say we planned our location around fiber availability and this great fiber path to the world," remarks Jeremy Malli, a network engineer at Visionary. "The truth is, we grew up here, and we built our network to serve businesses in our home state."
With additional data centers in Casper and Billings, the company offers DSL and wireless broadband services in 33 Wyoming communities, while also providing Internet services to municipalities in Colorado and Montana.