Full Transcript:

Gary Evans: I am Gary Evans. I am the President of HBC in Winona, Minnesota. A service provider of that also works with communities to try and help them meet their connectivity dreams.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Let’s define that a little bit, give me a real world example of what you would do?

Gary Evans: OK, typically HBC started a wholesale division in 2001 recognizing that we had developed certain amount of expertise in the video voice and data area, we have been Triple Play provider since 1998 and actually if you really want to go back further, we were part of an education project that connected our schools and public buildings with fiber optic lines in 1992, long before most people were thinking about that. so, having developed a certain amount of expertise in that area, we decided that we would start a wholesale division, because we understood that there were a lot of communities trying to create viability and indispensability for the future and we pretty much envision to cookie cutter approach, that we could do it here and then we duplicate it there and what we discovered is every community is very different and that in reality is the strength of the community. So, I think it is safe to say that what HBC creates is Partners, not customers and we work very hard to tailor solutions to their needs. So, a real world example, and I will use in this case of retail one, because it is important in St Charles, Minnesota, which is a small community about 20 miles west of Winona and 20 miles east of Rochester was seeking to become the number one bed room community of Rochester. Had determined that it really needed state of the art telecommunications to be able to real lives add dream came to us and asked if we could help them. When we began building that network in 2001 there were two very tiny housing developments in progress, today there are 8 occupied. So, I would have to suggest that their target was right on, they knew what they wanted to be. One of the things that we discovered with communities that we work with and we are clearly a real American company – vision is a commodity that you just cannot have in enough abundance, but it is likely that without it nothing will happen and so one of the things we first look at, what is the communities vision? How does it expect to real life to that? And then we try and tailor a solution to meet that expectation.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, for those who don’t know, Rochester, Minnesota is actually the home to Mayo clinic.

Gary Evans: Mayo Clinic and a very large IBM plant and so both of those industries, if you will, have the need for lots and lots of information workers or at least a lot of workers whose lively hood depends upon a clear interface with technology.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, if you have got a community just outside of Rochester who wants to have really great telecommunications channels, I have to assume that that was just a fantastic network that would have been installed for being able to, actually I would assume – I make some assumptions here, but I assume that lot of those users are go into Mayo or go into IBM and may be they are doing the telecommuting without going into the office. So…

Gary Evans: Absolutely, what we are saying now is particularly with Mayo and IBM and more and more business and industry too, to work at home phenomenon is becoming very, very popular.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, you work in the community area, you keep mentioning community, are you helping bring fiber direct to the homes in many of these communities or you…

Gary Evans: Yes, as a matter of fact Wabasha, Minnesota which is a relatively small community, 30 miles north of Winona was our first fiber to the home guild and this summer we are doing three additional communities in south-eastern Minnesota, in addition to building a fiber ring that will setup another five or six communities for Fiber To The Home.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you only work in Minnesota or you a national…?

Gary Evans: Well, actually our retail base is Minnesota, our wholesale base is Wisconsin and Minnesota. Currently we are looking at opportunities in 18 states.