Resound Networks entered into a bid for a government grant in 2022. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) ran a reverse auction that ran in the November of 2020, Resound competed under strict parameters to be approved.
“After being entered into the auction, we were provisionally awarded after the auction,” CEO, Tyson Curtis said. “After being awarded the funding and the area, we entered into the long form process.”
The ‘long form process’ required Resound to provide financial, engineering and legal documentation for the grant. Additionally the company had to get approval from the seven states they would be building into. A process that required nearly 4,000 pages of documentation on the engineering plans and financial plans. The grant was formally authorized, Friday December, 16 of 2022. Resound will build out deeper into Texas and New Mexico, as well as into Colorado, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
The grant provided roughly 303 million dollars to Resound to build it’s expansion into rural, unserved areas of the seven states.
“We’ll be bringing gigabyte capable Internet to 215,000 homes,” Curtis said. “The areas we’ll be covering, as of now, rely on satellite Internet. So we’ll be providing high speed Internet to these people.”
Currently, Resound serves 115 cities, primarily in Texas and New Mexico, but this growth will bring them into five more states. After the time of competition, the company will have coverage to four million homes. This level of growth will bring more jobs and money into the Pampa economy as the company is Pampa based.
“This growth will be hugely significant for Resound and more so for Pampa,” Curtis said. “Brian Waldrip, Chad Giles and myself, the three partners all Pampa born and raised are glad to bring this kind of growth to our hometown.”
While waiting on the formal approval, Resound began building out in the gulf region of Texas to get a head start on the anticipated project. Now with the approval and funding, the deployment will increase into the new areas. As of now, the company opens five to six new markets a month but by the end of 2023 will be opening 15 to 20 new markets.
“There’s a lot that goes into getting into these rural markets, but Resound has truly been a pioneer in that field,” Curtis said. “We have done so much in the fixed wireless Internet space. Chad Giles, who is the original founder of Resound is first class in what he does, and a true pioneer in changing the game.”
Through the grant, Resound will build one of the most advanced state-of-the-art networks in the U.S. competing with the biggest companies.
“A small town company is now competing head to head will the largest telecom companies,” Curtis said. “And we’ll perform on the same level as these companies and take market share from them.”
As it sits now, Resound is a medium type provider to 150 cities, but after this expansion will be a multi state provider within the south central U.S. Before the auction, the company spent a year building out a strategy in preparation for the bid. Once entering into the bid, the last two years have been spent proving the capabilities of Resound.
Now with the approval, the company will begin building out the infrastructure and establishing data centers for the processing and routing equipment and preparing for the growth ahead.
“We’re going to add roughly a thousand jobs to take this on,” Curtis said. “We’ll have to add more high paying technology jobs Pampa has never had before.”
Out of the 418 companies in the program, including big names like Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications, Resound was the 6th largest recipient of the bunch.
With approval given and funding give, Resound will begin the six year process of building out into all the areas they’re required for the grant to cover.
