NITCO has seen major growth over the years with even more exciting plans for expansion in the year to come.
Overall, fiber internet tends to be a better value than cable internet. Although cable offers the cheapest internet plans, fiber optic offers significantly faster upload and download speeds for only a few dollars more each month. Therefore, for those who have the option of selecting a fiber optic provider, that is most likely your best bet.
As a company with a legacy of over 80 years based in Hebron, IN, NITCO is a leader in new technologies having first installed fiber back in 1985.
“We're very familiar with how fiber works and what a great medium it is for folks to get awesome bandwidth when it comes to the internet,” said Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tom Carroll.
Today NITCO currently has around 1,000 customers that can get their fiber service. The plan for 2022, Carroll explained, is to add another 500 homes in their home territory of Hebron and DeMotte, IN.
NITCO’s fiber services have also taken Morocco, IN. by storm, as a new fiber build was announced in the past year. Currently, NITCO services around 400 homes in the town with cable TV and internet, and they plan to expand that to 640 more homes in 2022.
“We're going to transition that from coax to fiber service, meaning that they'll be able to get gigabit speeds at their home,” Carroll said.
Kouts is also another town NITCO plans to expand upon in 2022.
“We just added 125 new homes in Kouts with fiber capability now, and we're going to expand on that. We'll probably do the central and northern half of the town of Kouts so they can get NITCO fiber, and that's going to happen this year and next year. So it's happening actually pretty quickly for us,” Carroll said.
All-in-all, by 2023, an estimated 1,500 new homes will be added with fiber from NITCO.
NITCO chose Morocco specifically as a town to expand upon after they acquired the cable company TV Cable of Rensselaer three years ago.
“We can already offer speeds up to 100 megabytes to our current customers in the city of Rensselaer, so they're getting really fast speeds as it is,” Carroll said. “But we're going to want to expand on that; we want to be able to make a gigabit capable, but that's going to be down the road. So Morocco's first; that's where we're going to focus our efforts to get those homes and make it the very first gigabit community in Newton County, and we think that's very cool. Every community should be gigabit capable.”
Carroll said that in addition to the Hebron, Morocco, and Rensselaer areas, NITCO also plans on further expanding their fiber services to the DeMotte, Valparaiso, Chesterton, and East Chicago areas as well.
The funds to make these expansions possible comes from NITCO’s private investment, state grants from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) and other grants made possible from the Federal government.
“We know that there are communities in southern Porter County that need much better bandwidth, and we don't currently serve those areas, but we might be able to help them,” Carroll said.
In addition to the fiber expansions, NITCO has also been working on NITCO TV, a project in the works for the past two and a half years. The company just finished transitioning their current cable customers to their new IPTV streaming service, and now they’re looking to roll the product out to all customers that can get internet. NITCO TV will provide an IPTV streaming service with 150 cable network channels, plus all the local stations out of Chicago and surrounding areas.
“Why people don’t cut the cord is local content,” said Carroll. “Even with their want for local content, they would disconnect because of data usage for streaming. Our fiber packages have NO DATA CAPS. We give you the programming you want at the best price of anyone.”
Carroll credits his hardworking team for making these expansions possible and is extremely proud of the team he works alongside, and will have in the future as they are currently looking to add more people to their crew.
“NITCO is local people with a face and a name that live in your communities and work hard for where they call home, too,” Carroll said.”Our design team, Don Schoenbeck, Dan Odle and Gary Gray, is doing an awesome job. I walk into the office every day saying, ‘hey, we need fiber over here.’ And they just look at me and say ‘but I'm working on this over here.’ It is a good problem to have, and our NITCO construction crews are working really hard. We are growing to reach more homes, but we need more crew positions, and this is why it is a great place to work.”
Carroll said NITCO is looking to add more employees to help with the increasing numbers of customers.
“As a matter of fact, we're still hiring. We need more construction help. So if anybody's interested in coming to work for NITCO and helping our construction or installation and repair or our help desk team.”
Click here to learn more about available careers at NITCO, and for more information on NITCO, visit their website here.
