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Jason Smith, Smart Rural Communities

Posted on by Pat Melgares

Logo, Smart Rural CommunityIt is one thing to be a rural community. It’s another to be a Smart Rural Community.

The designation — “Smart Rural Community” — was created by a national association to recognize rural telecommunication companies that are providing superior broadband service in their areas. And many of those are found in Kansas.

Last week we met Jason Smith, general manager and CEO of Rainbow Communications in Everest, Kansas. In 2015, Rainbow Communications was one of 10 rural telecomm companies across the nation to earn the Smart Rural Communities Showcase Award.

The award is presented to those rural telecommunications companies that demonstrate superior broadband service in the regions they serve. The Smart Rural Communities designation has now been broadened to include any community that is served by a telecomm company that meets certain high standards.

This is a project of NTCA, the national rural broadband association. NTCA works on behalf of more than 850 small independent businesses and cooperatives that provide broadband service in rural communities. These businesses cover approximately one-third of the nation’s land mass.

Continue reading “Jason Smith, Smart Rural Communities” →

Jason Smith, Rainbow Communications

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Portrait of man smiling at camera, Jason Smith
Jason Smith, Rainbow Communications

“Somewhere over the rainbow….”

That line from the song in The Wizard of Oz makes me think of Dorothy and her desire to return to Kansas. It also makes me think of modern Kansans who are using the wizardry of modern telecommunications to help their home state.

Jason Smith is general manager and CEO of Rainbow Communications in Everest, Kansas. He grew up in Everest and graduated from Horton High School.

“I figured I was never coming back,” Smith said. He went to K-State and became the first in his family to go to college. He was undecided what to pursue for a career.

“I knew about the jobs of the farmer and the banker, but this was during the farm crisis of the 1980s and neither of those was any fun,” Smith said. He had friends who were majoring in agricultural economics, so he joined them and got a degree in agribusiness.

Smith took a position with a John Deere dealer. He also met and married his wife, who is a teacher. They would have four children. The oldest now is an engineer and a K-State graduate. They have a daughter studying pre-physical therapy, a son in high school, and an eighth-grade daughter.

Smith’s hometown happened to be the headquarters of the Rainbow Telephone Cooperative Association (later known as Rainbow Communications). In 1998, the company advertised for its first-ever marketing manager. Smith applied for the job.

Continue reading “Jason Smith, Rainbow Communications” →

Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Head and shoulders picture of Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek
Daniel Friesen

Let’s meet some freedom fighters. These won’t be found in some jungle fighting a dictator. These fighters are working to achieve freedom from bad Internet service, and they are based in rural Kansas.

Daniel Friesen is founder and chief innovation officer at IdeaTek in Buhler. He describes his company’s staff as freedom fighters for good Internet service, particularly in rural communities.

Daniel went to high school in Buhler. He was a tech-savvy kid. “When our teachers at the school got computers, they would ask me to set them up,” Daniel said.

In 1999, he and four high school friends started a computer repair business in Buhler with $250 in the basement of his parent’s house. The business was named IdeaTek.

Daniel continued the business in college while his four friends pursued other interests. He studied computer systems support at Hutchinson Community College and management information systems at Wichita State before pursuing the business full time in Buhler, where he and his wife and family live today. Continue reading “Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek” →

Catherine Moyer, Pioneer Communications

Posted on by Jason Hackett

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Customer service. That was the role which began one young woman’s career in telecommunications. Now she is leading that same company which is serving customers’ technology needs in new and innovative ways.

Catherine Moyer
Catherine Moyer

Catherine Moyer is chief executive officer of Pioneer Communications, a rural telecommunications company headquartered in Ulysses. She grew up in Ulysses and went to college in Vermont. Her first job was at Pioneer Communications, where she worked as a frontline customer service representative.

Pioneer is one of many local telephone companies formed across rural America in the 1940s and ’50s. Some say the rural telephone business began with a farmer stringing a copper wire from one fencepost to the next. Cooperatives and local companies were formed to offer and expand service. Pioneer Communications was founded in 1950 as the Pioneer Telephone Company. Continue reading “Catherine Moyer, Pioneer Communications” →