Big River Communications focusing on fiber

Big River has big plans.

It was almost a year ago Big River Communications launched a subsidiary called Circle Fiber, which has embarked on a major project to bring high-speed fiber optic communications to Cape Girardeau, Jackson and other cities throughout the region.

Kevin Cantwell

I sat down last week with Big River Communications president Kevin Cantwell, along with Circle Fiber president Chris Simmons and company vice president Chris Foeste, to learn more about the project. In the process, I also learned about Big River's origins and how it has become a significant player in the communications industry throughout North America.

"Obviously, we've got a big fiber build-out happening in Southeast Missouri," Kevin said as we sat around a conference room table at Big River's Cape Girardeau headquarters on South Minnesota Street. "We're doing Jackson and Cape and we'll start construction in Poplar Bluff in about two weeks."

The company also plans to announce fiber installation projects in three more area towns in a few months.

"We have four (towns) we're looking at right now," he said.

Residential connections have already begun in Jackson and it won't be long before the same can be said in Cape Girardeau.

"Right now, if you're in Jackson you can go online (at www.circlefiber.com), enter your address and it will put you into a zone and tell you when construction will start in your area," Kevin said.

Beginning this week, residents of Cape who are interested in fiber connectivity can go to the site and register their names and addresses.

"That will help us determine our Cape zones," he said.

The zones, in turn, will help Circle Fiber map out an installation timeline that will branch out from the company's existing fiber lines in downtown Cape in areas such as the free Wi-Fi in the Marquette Tech District. Circle Fiber will be installing similar free Wi-Fi systems in parts of Jackson, including city parks, uptown Jackson and the football stadium.

"It's a transformational gigabyte network that will literally give every home access to the service," the Big River president said. "Even if they don't want the service, they can still add it to the side of their house, which will add value to their home.

"Once the (fiber) infrastructure is in place, the platform will allow us to deliver higher and higher bandwidth," Kevin explained, and said it won't be long before high-speed broadband service will be necessary in homes that have more and more Wi-Fi enabled devices.

"You're probably up to 25, 30, 35 devices in your house and you don't even know it," he observed. "Fiber can deliver the necessary bandwidth and that's why we're making this big investment."

Big River Communications has almost 100 employees working out of offices in Cape Girardeau, St. Louis, Farmington and Poplar Bluff, as well as some who work remotely around the country.JAY WOLZ

From teaching to telecommunications

A native of The Loop area of St. Louis, Kevin earned undergraduate degrees in education and business administration at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. He was a teacher and coach at St. Charles High School from 1980 until 1984 before joining AT&T during the breakup of the Bell Telephone system.

By the early 1990s, though, he was creating companies for a relatively new communications platform called "the internet."

"My first one was a company called GolfMasters.com that golfers could use to schedule tee times," he recalled. "That was in 1993 and I was trying to explain it to some venture capital guys, and they were like, 'What the hell is dot com? What are you talking about? What's the internet?'"

Eventually, he found himself selling infrastructure systems to companies such as LDD, a long-distance telephone provider with dial-up internet service headquartered in Cape Girardeau.

"I was all over the world working with telephone companies on the internet and selling them the platforms they needed," Kevin told me. Here in the states, I had Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, Southwestern Bell and Bell South that bought our platform."

LDD was, at the time, one of Kevin's clients. "I sold them the platform and told the guy (LDD owner Ed Eagleton) I liked the company, I liked the area and I'm going to buy the company someday."

Kevin said it took five or six years to persuade Eagleton to sell LDD to him and his business partners. Eventually, in 2001, a deal was struck.

"Dec. 21 of 2001 is when we bought it," Kevin remembers. "We changed the name to Big River Telephone and here we are 20 years later."

The company's name was eventually changed to Big River Communications to better reflect the various communications platforms the company now provides.

"What people don't know is we're a nationwide provider offering services all over the United States," Kevin said. "We wholesale our voice over IP (internet protocol) product to other carriers, to electric co-ops, cable companies, wireless internet providers and municipalities. They, in turn, sell our service under their name. People have no idea who we are because we're behind the scenes."

Technology, Kevin said, has changed tremendously over the past two decades.

"It's rapidly changing and if you're not changing with it, you'll become obsolete and we've been far from obsolete," he said. "When we came in, it was dial up. We went from dial up to DSL (digital subscriber line), and then from there we went to the 4G LTE (long-term evolution technology), but as demands changed, we've had to adapt and change as well, and now the future, we're pretty confident, is fiber."

Today, Big River has nearly 100 employees working out of offices in Cape Girardeau, St. Louis and Farmington. The company also has employees in Poplar Bluff, as well as some who work remotely around the country.

Although he's approaching retirement age, Kevin says he's not ready to "log off" from Big River anytime soon.

"All the guys I knew at AT&T are all retired now and they ask me when I'm going to retire and I tell them I retired Dec. 21, 2001," he said with a smile. "I like what I do and I don't want to do anything else. Maybe in another 20 years I'll figure out what I want to do when I grow up."

Watami reopens

Last week in this space I said a reopening date for the remodeled Watami Sushi & Hibachi Steakhouse would be announced soon. Well, the opening date was over the weekend.

Owner Sam Zhang gave me a preview of the upgraded restaurant last week. The eatery's footprint has been expanded by about 1,000 square feet, decor has been refreshed, and a new "bubble tea" bar has been added.

Watami, at 45 S. Kingshighway in Cape Girardeau, is open for lunch from 11 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and reopens for dinner from 4:30 until 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and from 4:30 until 10:30 p.m. Fridays. On weekends, Watami's hours are from 11 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Saturdays and from noon until 9 p.m. Sundays.

Mall owner still a mystery

I'm asked several times a week whether I know who bought West Park Mall in the online auction held in late June. The ownership remains a mystery, which probably means the paperwork hasn't been completed and the sale has not been closed.

CBL Properties, the mall's management company, told me Thursday they're still waiting to hear from the new landlord.

Refrigerator watch ...

Forty-four weeks and counting!

Looking for more business news? Check out B Magazine, and the B Magazine email newsletter. Go to www.semissourian.com/newsletters to find out more.