JCFiber Partners With NineStar Connect to Provide New Services to Businesses
JCREMC’s subsidiary internet service provider, JCFiber, continues expanding its commercial business offerings while it nears success in delivering internet to underserved rural residents.
“In 2020, we decided to fill all the gaps where there was no wired high-speed available internet in the county,” said John Sturm CEO of JCREMC and President of JCFiber. “A lot of rural areas were in ‘internet deserts’. We chose to bring the best quality broadband product to every corner of Johnson County and now estimate those gaps to be filled by the spring of 2024.”
Many are not aware that JCFiber’s focus includes expanding its commercial business segment.
“Serving commercial business and rural residential segments are two different challenges. When we’re serving rural areas, we’re fulfilling a need, there’s no profit in it really,” Sturm said. “In our commercial business segment, which we have been serving since 2013, it is a lot more competitive with other providers, but we have the unique advantage of being local.”
What allows JCFiber to compete with larger providers is their localized focus and dependability.
“Recently, a local school was affected by a tornado, and their current provider was unable to give a timeline for when they’d be able to get back online and back to school,” Sturm said. “But we were able to pool together our local staff and had high speed internet service up and running for them within 12 hours, so they could resume the important task of education.”
Their cloud-based hosted phone system allows for easy call management and transfer, with benefits including cost control, enhanced features, 24/7 support, disaster planning, and scalability.
“We had another company with storm damage that knocked out their phone service, and for this type of company, no phone calls means no business,” Sturm said. “In less than 12 hours, we put a new hosted phone system in for them. It’s just another example of a local business calling a reliable local provider like ours to meet their needs.”
JCFiber has partnered with NineStar Connect in Greenfield since 2013. The merger of a telephone cooperative and an electric cooperative, NineStar has been in the telecommunication business since 1895.
Another area JCFiber and NineStar Connect has focused on for commercial businesses is cybersecurity.
“We offer classes for small businesses to have access to experts at NineStar along with other cybersecurity solutions that can integrate with and augment their JCFiber business services.”
Businesses can also use JCFiber and NineStar as a trustworthy and nearby colocation facility for their back-up servers and data storage.
“If businesses have IT service needs or computer systems that store valuable data, they can utilize us for a variety of services including colocation services that is available at several central Indiana locations.,” said Sturm. “In the event of a data breech, system failure or cybersecurity threats, they can have their last saved data in a safe place.”
The partnership offers GigE Internet with reliable upload and download speeds of 10 Gig and beyond, catering to various needs such as business class broadband, TLS circuits, and active fiber internet circuits.
“Our 10 year partnership with NineStar combines our fiber infrastructure and local field support with NineStar’s networking and technical expertise, and call-center support to provide superior services and rapid response,” said Sturm.
JCFiber prides themselves on excellent and timely customer service and technical support, with highly trained representatives ready to assist businesses.
“Everything we do is supported locally. We are staffed by neighbors of our customers who are naturally going to be more responsive,” He added. “Your call will not get shipped overseas or across the State and passed off to many different people.”
JCREMC and JCFiber are both using the same staff and operate under the same business principles. According to Sturm, “we pride ourselves on commitment to community, reliability, and offering services at the lowest possible cost.” Sturm added, “we are here for the long haul, and I live among our customers, so you can bank on us treating you fairly while delivering great service.”
Sturm credits much of JCFiber’s reliability to their member-owned cooperative business model. Electrical cooperatives like JCREMC have served rural communities and provided reliable support to businesses for decades.