In the Rocky Mountains, learn how Union Wireless upgraded to LTE with no downtime in extremely challenging conditions
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Wyoming—While the U.S. carrier market is dominated by Tier 1 operators, there are smaller, rural service providers delivering comparable quality of service—in incredibly challenging environmental conditions—to important markets that may be otherwise overlooked.
Case in point, Union Wireless has more towers in Wyoming than any other carrier. The company is an evolution of Union Telephone, founded in 1914 by John D. Woody, and still run by members of the Woody family.
“Our customers don’t necessarily live in a town,” company CTO Eric Woody explained. “They live in remote valleys and canyons and hillsides all over this area. They need the same quality of service and they have that expectation to receive it.”
He said the biggest challenge Union Wireless faces is site access. “There are not paved roads to most sites. Some of them are nothing more than a two-track up a mountainside. It’s the remote nature of dealing in the Rocky Mountains and building a network inside those valleys and hilltops.”
Union Wireless CMO Brian Woody traced the company’s start from a landline provider to the beginnings of cellular in early 1990s and, most recently, 3G and LTE, a transition in partnership with ICT vendor Huawei.
“Our vendor at the time wasn’t supporting us the way we felt we needed to be supported.” After an early multi-vendor approach, “Huawei won hands down. They treated Union the way we feel our customers nee to be treated. They’re really good about getting their customers up and running, which means our customers up and running. That’s how we like to do business.”
Network Optimization Manager Tony Kelly said the partnership with Huawei has given Union Wireless significantly more flexibility “for how and where we can install this technology. We were able to look at how to optimize this network in an open fashion meaning we weren’t restricted in the things we could do.”
Eric Woody said this created a seamless transition–“no down time”—when Union Wireless launched LTE services. This smooth upgrade, upgraded service offering and Huawei support is key to Union’s success.
“The way that Huawei has helped us be able to remain competitive in this marketplace with the Tier 1 providers…is they’ve allowed me to have multiple technologies at an affordable price. It costs me less man hours, les time, I was able to get it to market a lot sooner.”
For a video case study, click here. To learn more about Huawei US and its portfolio of ICT products and services, click here.
