Joink LLC Expands Service Area in East Central Illinois

Roxana Ryan
Published: December 6, 2012
Related to: Southeast Central eTeam

Brian Gray is the Network Manager at Joink LLC, a provider of high-speed wireless internet in Southeast Central Illinois and Western Indiana.

Are you serving any interesting anchor institutions or businesses that are using your services to do innovative things?

Absolutely!  We provide Internet connectivity to many medical facilities, local governments, K-12 schools, and home businesses in Illinois and Indiana.  As for distance learning, I know we have a number of home users who use the Internet for getting higher education online.  Usually, these are adults who have full-time jobs and are trying to improve their lives by receiving a college education.

Are you doing any network upgrades or expansions anywhere?

Yes, Joink is in a constant state of network upgrades throughout Indiana and Illinois.  In 2012, Joink has upgraded six existing locations and added three new locations in Illinois.  We have plans to upgrade three more Illinois locations in the next two months and are in talks with four new locations that would come online in 2013. We just started installing equipment near Casey last week and 40-50 homes (who only had satellite before) will have faster service by Christmas!

What services do you provide?

Joink has three distinct, yet complimentary divisions.  I work in the connectivity portion of the business.  We provide broadband Internet access up to 20 mbps for residential and small businesses in West Central Indiana and East Central Illinois.  We provide Enterprise Internet connectivity up to 100 mbps in that same area.  We also provide private transport between branch locations from 5 mbps – 100 mbps.  Joink utilizes wireless, copper and optical technologies to provide that connectivity.  

Our hosted services and custom application division offers co-location space for servers, web hosting, custom application development, off-site storage solutions, etc.  Joink Technology Services Group (TSG) specializes in small business and enterprise network design, VMWare, telephone systems, structured wiring, private LAN and WLAN.  Joink TSG will also consult on Internet connectivity for companies, whether Joink is the provider, or an alternative provider can better serve the client.

What are some of your greatest challenges or obstacles in getting subscribers and/or upgrading your network?

Competition is a good thing, but we are a privately-funded company and overbuilding from publicly-funded projects has been a concern.

Adoption (understanding why and how to use the internet) is another issue in our region. Some of our customers, particularly senior citizens, have said they don't see the relevance of high-speed internet. We want to make sure they have full access to digital literacy trainings in the region so they can learn about everything broadband has to offer!

Also, end users rarely understand that "broadband" is pretty generic.  We find users on satellite Internet are sometimes slow to change because they don't understand why satellite shouldn't have to be a consumer's first choice. We want to educate consumers on how fixed wireless broadband is different from cellular and satellite technologies. 

Finally, in our area, the Illinois Century Network’s (ICN) fiber project is in progress. We want to make sure our potential customers know that ICN is a large-scale, middle-mile project that will serve community anchor institutions like schools, hospitals, libraries, public safety offices, and more. Just because ICN is running fiber through your front yard doesn’t mean that you’ll receive access to that fiber at your residence.

Tell us about recent investments you've made in your infrastructure? 

We have made a number of investments in 2012 ranging from new servers for DNS and user authentication to increased backhaul capacity and reliability to upgrades or additions of customer servicing access points.

Do you have a newsletter or social media pages? What’s the best way to find out more about Joink?

Our website is our primary point of information.  We have our standard residential and small business coverage maps available online at www.joink.com/coverage.