Viaero Wireless in Sterling began a three-day grand opening celebration Thursday evening by hosting a Business After Hours and ribbon cutting ceremony at their newly constructed store at 516 West Main St. Logan County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Glenna Phelps-Aurich was on hand to welcome and congratulate store manager Kevin Vaughn and his staff on the new opening.
The grand opening of Viaero could in fact be called a re-grand opening because the company has had locations in Sterling for quite some time. Viaero President Frank DiRico said the cell phone company in Sterling and Fort Morgan started about 26 years ago as Northeast Colorado Cellular when he received a license to serve the region.
Prior to starting his business in Colorado, DiRico worked with two-way radio and building cell systems for other carriers in New England. At that time, the Federal Communications Commission held a lottery for 511 new cellular markets. “I was hoping to get Cape Cod or Vail,” DiRico said, “I ended up in northeast Colorado, where we started with a very small geographic area, a very small network. And we’ve just grown this thing.”
As Northeast Colorado Cellular began expanding into other markets, DiRico realized they needed new branding and a fresh creative name. The search for the appropriate name led DiRico and his team to the Latin word “viaero” meaning “by way of the air.” DiRico said he was once offered money for the “Viaero” name by a foreign car maker, but he firmly declined the offer.
The old Northeast Colorado Cellular company started with two towers back in the days of the big “bag phone,” when you could place towers 30 miles apart, but as the technology improved to handsets, the towers had to be placed closer together. Now, in areas with a sizable population and high data demand, towers are placed about every 2,000 feet.
“The demand for data on these phones is really huge,” DiRico said. “It really stresses these networks.” But, the company has up to twice or three times the towers as their competition in rural areas. “We have a huge commitment to serving rural Colorado,” DiRico said. “There’s not a lot of focus for these big nationwide carriers to come into a lot of these towns. If anything we’ve forced these guys to build more networks out here.”
The competition for the rural market continues to force Viaero Wireless to grow at a very rapid pace. And according to DiRico, the company is seeing more subscribers, more networking, more towers, and within the next year they plan to launch 5G.
All that growth means the need for more towers to service customers and Viaero is proud to state that they own their towers, which are designed to withstand up to an F3 tornado. The towers are also propane buried, meaning in the case of an emergency Viareo’s network would be up and running almost immediately, something they claim their competitors can’t do.
While the towers are impressive, it’s what’s on the towers that has DiRico so excited these days. Viaero Wireless towers have state of the art weather cameras allowing for real time weather viewing and a quicker emergency alert and response. The cameras have the ability to zoom in up to 20 miles away and several television stations in Denver and Nebraska use the cameras to update their viewing audience on changing weather conditions. Recently, Viaero weather cameras were responsible for enabling a 7 minute faster response to a tornado spotted in the Sterling area because the event was not just detected on radar; it was visible to the cameras.
As a privately held company, Viaero Wireless has seen and experienced 26 years of tremendous success serving rural areas and company president DiRico is quick to share the credit with his staff and employees.
“I’ve been blessed by having some great help,” DiRico said. “There are so many bright people out here and given the opportunity locally, they would rather stay here than go to Denver or move out of the area.” Viaero Wireless employs 500 plus in their service areas keeping the money local.
It’s a small number of employees if you compare Viareo to say Verizon, but being up against a cell phone giant hasn’t deterred DiRico from the David verses Goliath scenario. Instead, the challenge has forced Viaero to build a great network, competitive retail stores and a local customer call center to serve their clients. All the challenge has done is allow Viaero Wireless to meet and serve the rural customer better and building a new store in Sterling certainly helps that cause. According to DiRico, the new store building in Sterling is necessary to keep the “Viaero” branding consistent and to bring a first class retail experience to the entire community.
At present Viaero Wireless covers over 50 percent of the state of Colorado as well as having a presence in Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas. The Fort Morgan based company also partners with AT&T and T-Mobile to help cover their costumers in the United States and around the world, according to marketing director Lori Searls.
Viaero Wireless in Sterling is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more information on the store in Sterling call 970-425-6772 or connect on Facebook at Viaero Wireless-Sterling.
Lisa Young: 970-526-9281, lyoung@journal-advocate.com
