Internet access can be challenging in the tiny town of Parkman, northwest of Sheridan, Wyoming.
That’s one of the reasons Parkman Bar and Grill accepts only cash or check from its customers for good, old-fashioned meals like the fried chicken on Friday nights and the thick, juicy hamburgers with hand-cut fries.
“We do have internet,” bar owner Patricia Caywood told Cowboy State Daily. “We have Visionary (Broadband) fiber optics, which runs my ATM and my jukebox.”
Broader internet access hasn’t been all that affordable for Caywood’s purposes.
“You can get internet out that way through different venues, like Starlink is now out in our area, but we don’t do it up at Parkman just because it’s so sketchy out there, and I’m not going to spend an obscene amount of money for my little bar for sketchy anything," she said. "So that’s why we don’t run credit cards or anything out there, because if we lose anything, then I’m out the money.”
Better, more affordable high-speed internet is on the way for communities like Parkman, which falls into one of Wyoming’s many grey areas identified on the FCC’s national broadband map.
The color is an indicator for the most underserved areas in Wyoming.
Right now, that color is much more common than dark blue, which indicates the best-served areas in places like Cheyenne, Casper, and Torrington, where at least 80% of households are connected with high-speed internet.
Wyoming will get $348 million in federal funding from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program to ensure speeds of at least 25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps up become available to everyone across the state who wants it.
The federal money has already set off something of a fiber frenzy across the West, Wyoming included.
Although some who are hoping for better internet access may experience this “frenzy” as somewhat slower than they’d like.
The BEAD program kicked off in 2021 and has since worked its way through two presidential administrations to get where it is now.
The Trump administration required a rework of the program, to make it more technology neutral, instead of fiber centric, so that fixed wireless and satellite options could be equally considered when more appropriate.
The timeline right now has work starting April/May of next year, with a four-year clock ticking off thereafter to build the work out. BEAD recipients are anticipating a phased rollout, though, rather than everything happening everywhere all at once.
In all, there are 38,933 locations that don’t have at the minimums for high-speed Internet service, according to Wyoming Business Council’s Broadband Manager Chad Bolling.
“A lot of it is the topography, the geography of the state,” he said. “It’s the geography of the state, and then we’re also so sparsely populated. That’s another challenge.”
Mixed Feelings
Caywood has mixed feelings about improved, high-speed internet in her neck of the Wyoming woods.
On the one hand, she’s glad friends and neighbors who want better access will be getting it. And, too, her grandson will be starting school full-time soon, and might then need better, high-speed internet access.
“The times are changing, and I do respect that,” she said. “And I’m sure within time, we’ll have to upgrade to this, that or whatever up in our area, which will be perfectly fine.”
But Caywood is also used to the way things are now, and, in some ways, sees her bar’s lack of connectivity as a marketing plus. Not everyone wants to be plugged in all the time. Sometimes it’s nice to escape to a place that’s a little more off the online grid.
The Parkman Bar and Grill offers that, and it’s what her customers have come to expect.
“I mean, you can go to Sheridan and do all of this stuff that today’s world is doing,” she said. “I’m keeping Parkman more traditional than advanced. A lot of people respect that and like that.”
It also feels more family- and community-oriented in Caywood’s book, and she likes that.
“You know, you come in here and put your cell phones down,” she said. “You have a conversation with the community, instead of being in here on your cell phones. And 10 to one, a lot of the customers who come in here are doing just that. They’re not on their phones. They’re actually setting out to have a conversation. That’s what we like out here.”
Still, she’s also all about customers having the options they want. So, she’s keeping an open mind about what the future may hold. The dedicated ATM is an example of that, as well as three recently added televisions, for access to the Cowboy Channel.
“I do those little things out of respect for customers,” she said. “And I respect the fact that community members would be thankful that it would (become an option) for them.”
The Cowboy Tower
Drilling through rock-hard mountains is expensive, and connecting a single ranch that might not have neighbors for miles and miles is a difficult economic proposition.
That’s one of the reasons Wyoming has so many unconnected areas.
The challenging topography is also one of the reasons why Vistabeam co-founder Matt Larsen was glad to see that the federal grant program was reworked under the Trump administration to be a little less fiber centric.
“Fiber is great for some places, but not so great for others,” he said. “It’s very expensive to put in, and it generally takes a long time to put in.”
While it’s been considered the gold standard, Wyoming has many places where it continues to be too cost prohibitive.
“If you’ve got a ranch that sits 25 miles out of town and 20 miles of that is dirt road snaking past very few homes, building fiber out that direction could be $100,000 to $150,000 just to get to that one home.”
A fixed wireless option, on the other hand, can bring that cost down to more like $2,000 to $3,000 for many locations.
Larsen has been using what he calls “cowboy towers” across an eastern swath of Wyoming to extend fixed wireless access to communities like Lusk and Centennial.
“We’ve got two (cowboy towers) around Centennial that we feed the town with,” Larsen said. “And we’ve also got something called a fence post repeater, which is a fence post with a little hat on top that has a solar panel and a couple of wireless radios. We used that in parts of Niobrara County to extend service out to some ranches.”
The cowboy tower was inspired by something Larson saw in Utah that an individual had designed. It had some shortcomings, but Larsen sent the idea to a partner, who was able to create something more reliable and portable, with easy installation.
“The first one we put up was in the middle of nowhere, eight miles west of Hanna, Wyoming, on the top of a hill,” Larsen said. “That was there for 12 years, and we never had any problems with it. So, they’re solid.”
Now there are 30 or so such towers deployed throughout Vistabeam’s network.
“We’ve also sold a few to other entities, and they’re great because we can put them up in just a day,” Larsen said. “We don’t even have to dig a hole. We don’t have to pour concrete.”
The tower can be taken to a location with a pickup or side-by-side and then cranked up to the sky, after which all the equipment goes on, including solar panels and wind generators.
Larsen chooses the latter because those options are available much more quickly than building electrical lines out to remote locations.
“In Centennial, we actually built electrical power to them, and that took a lot longer for the electric power to get built than for the tower to go up,” Larsen said.
Why Kuiper Beat Starlink
The cowboy towers are just one example of how Cowboy State broadband companies have been innovative and scrappy when it comes to building out broadband to underserved areas.
But there are times when Wyoming’s terrain means using satellite companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and Amazon’s Kuiper just makes more sense.
“If you’ve got someone who’s way out there and they’re in a bowl surrounded by hills and trees, it’s tough to get wireless into granite in the ground, it’s super expensive to get fiber to,” Larsen said. “That’s the place where satellite makes a lot of sense, because you can put that satellite up out there and then they can get service.”
Wyoming awarded around $11 million for satellite services for 15,629 locations. Starlink, which already serves a lot of Wyoming customers, got just $1 million of that slice, while newcomer, Kuiper, took the lion’s share at $10 million for 15,000 locations.
Kuiper hasn’t yet launched or served even one customer yet, despite years of development. They do have about 100 satellites deployed so far and are planning a launch soon to add about 30 more to their network.
Bolling told Cowboy State Daily the Wyoming Broadband office followed federal guidance requiring them to use the lowest cost per location to score competing applications for the funding.
Diversifying the satellite companies makes some sense, Larsen said.
“The problem is, the more people who get on satellite, the less capacity there is for everyone,” he said. “So, if we just sent out Starlink terminal to everyone who didn’t have internet, the system would get overloaded.”
In fact, Starlink already has some areas in Wyoming where it’s not taking new customers, Larsen added, because it already reached its capacity limit.
“So, I’m a big believer in the right tool for the job,” Larsen said. “You want service in the town of Lusk, (then) fiber makes sense in the town. It’s just like any suburban neighborhood as far as density. You get outside of town, the 10-mile area outside of town, that might be where wireless makes more sense.”
At some point, things become remote enough or hilly enough where satellite makes the most sense.
“Wyoming’s done a great job of looking at not just being fiber only for everything,” Larsen said. “They were very open to working in some fixed wireless in the places where it made more sense than fiber and using satellite when it made more sense.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
