March 14, 2008 — Broadband VI of St. Croix has purchased all the Internet services of Ackley Communications, expanding into the St. Thomas and St. John markets.
Broadband VI is a broadband Internet provider on St. Croix with roughly 2,000 customers. It links to the web through the Global Crossing cable beachhead near Frederiksted and distributes its service with tower-based microwave transmitters and home-based receiving antennas. The company is buying the dialup service SurvVI, high-speed wireless Big Surf, and Internet telephony provider TalkVI, with roughly 1,000 clients, largely on St. Thomas and St. John.
Ackley Communications founder Gordon Ackley will remain connected to the enterprise as a consultant, said Mike Meluskey, Broadband VI co-founder, in an interview with the Source Friday. Ackley also owns and will continue to own several local radio stations and other businesses.
"This is monumental for the Virgin Islands," he said, according to a company press release. "By combining Broadband VI's Global Crossing 155 Mbps (million bits per second) fiber connection with SurfVI's 155 Mbps microwave connection, this gives us two separate conduits between the Virgin Islands and the States, providing an incredible level of redundancy [and] reliability, and bypasses Innovative. This level of sophistication has never before been achieved in the Virgin Islands."
The company will maintain the Broadband VI name, with Gordon Ackley becoming chief technical officer, and Broadband VI managing the day-to-day operations on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John.
Broadband VI will start off by giving giving what amounts to a free service upgrade to its new St. Thomas and St. John customers. Currently, the standard account with Big Surf provides 384 Kbps (thousand bits per second). Broadband VI's closest equivalent on St. Croix provides more.
"We will immediately upgrade all St. Thomas and St. John residential customers to 1 meg to be in-line with our St. Croix residential client base and the Broadband VI pricing," Meluskey said.
Added Jerry Smith, another Broadband VI founder, "With two independent St. Thomas-to-St. Croix licensed microwave links, we now have automatic fail-over loops to each island using two independent and diverse technologies out to the VI. Global Crossing's fiber, plus Ackley's microwave/fiber to San Juan should eliminate any network outages. We look forward to deploying Ackley's ATM and T-1 capabilities on St. Croix."
Meluskey put it less technically to the Source.
"We're excited we're now on two separate fiber cables and two separate microwave networks," he said. "Even if there is an earthquake, or a ship anchor takes out a cable, it wouldn't matter to us. We'd automatically switch from one to the other. Not that we've ever had a problem. We've been down off the cable 45 seconds in the past three years. But this gives us extraordinary stability."
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