One of things I enjoy most about my job is personally thanking employees for the thousands of compliments they generate by delivering customers an experience that lives up to our name. I also receive an equal number of passionate pleas for service in areas we don’t currently serve and I don’t enjoy telling them they can’t enjoy WOW! You see, in order to receive our service, we must first invest millions of dollars to install our state-of-the art network.
Until recently, we had a singular focus on delighting customers in the original 42 communities we began to serve in the mid and late 1990’s. I believe we made a very wise decision to first deliver existing customers the possible service and meet all of our business objectives before we considering expanding into new areas. After attaining our initial business goals last year, our leadership team uniformly agreed that our organization was prepared to continue delivering our award winning service to current customers while simultaneously bringing the WOW! experience to new communities.
How did we determine where to go? Well, we have the great fortune of being surrounded by so many communities that want our service. In order to make the best business possible decision we established a set of criteria to rate the opportunities. We identified a myriad of important success factors that included the ability to market our service, the cost of construction, the proximity of the community to our existing network, the density of homes located within a community and the overall ease of construction. After months of intense research, analysis and debate, for Michigan, we selected Beverly Hills, Birmingham, and Grosse Pointe Woods as our first three expansion communities.
Once the selection process was completed, the tedious and intricate work of constructing a brand new, fiber rich network throughout the community began. The expansion process is extremely detailed and most of it is invisible to residents. The portion customers do see is the physical installation of our network most often onto existing utility poles located in the public easements that border a home. Over a period of several weeks, we install our advanced fiber network on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. As each area is completed, we provide information and education about how residents can make a change for the better.
Here is a summary of the status of our efforts in the three initial expansion areas:
Beverly Hills: The great news is we completed construction of our network in January 2011 and you can now make a change for the better. Installation in Beverly Hills has surpassed our expectations and the response from customers is awesome. I have received notes and emails from numerous customers expressing thanks for enabling them to join the WOW! family.
Birmingham: Today over 6000 residents have access to our service and construction is expected to be completed by March 1, 2011. When we are finished, customers in the residential community will have access to our service except for those located in condominium and apartment complexes. These developments have private easements that require us to obtain a separate contract with the association or apartment complex owner. As contracts are obtained to access these private easements, service will then be made available.
Grosse Pointe Woods (GPW): Network construction crews started hanging fiber optic cable last month. We expect to begin performing in-home installations on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis beginning in April or May of this year. Residents will find it quick and easy to make the change to our awarding winning service. At this point, GPW is the only one of the five Grosse Pointe communities we will serve due to local ordinances strictly prohibiting our ability to sell service directly to residents.
If you don’t live in one of these areas, that doesn’t mean you are not on our radar screen. We have a desire to grow and the required financial resources. Future expansion decisions will be predicated on the same operational philosophies that enabled us to attain past success. My hope is that one day I will have the immense pleasure of reading your note describing how WOW! team members are consistently delighted you though their actions while supporting a service that is enhancing your quality of life.
Keep checking our blog or our Coming Soon page from the WOW! website to learn more about future expansion projects though out the communities WOW! operates.
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