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Born
in Oak Park, IL, Rick also claims to be from Detroit and LA
prior to moving to northern California.
Rick relocated to rural Colusa county in the early
1990’s, located about 60 miles north of Sacramento, and was
active in the computer field earning a living as a consultant.
At that time there was no local Internet access of any
kind in the area.
He
began ColusaNET as a 2 line BBS in 1994 operating out of his
home. He went
commercial as an ISP in '96 and moved the business to an old
abandoned gas station where the owner only asked for minimal
rent; there were now 5 lines.
Eventually he could afford office space and expanded to
10 lines. Growth
continued from there.
After
attending an Internet conference and learning about DSL in '97,
he took out a loan, bought a DSL Access Management chassis (DSLAM),
managed to snake through the tariffs of his telco to get dry
copper pairs and began selling his own DSL service, again, the
only such service in the county. He is still selling his own DSL service to this day.
As
wireless began to mature Rick set his sights on deploying a
Wireless ISP (WISP) service.
All this connectivity in a small rural agricultural
community of only 5000! As Rick puts it, "They didn’t even know what I was
selling for quite a while, I nearly went broke.”
In
fall 2002, he took out another loan and almost single handedly
erected a 150’ Rohn SSV self supporting tower in the parking
lot right next to his ISP building.
(www.do-it-yourself-tower.com)
Symmetrical megabit wireless was suddenly readily
available and very affordable in his agricultural community.
Rick
is a regular speaker at WISPCON, the Wireless Internet Service
Provider conference (www.wispcon.info), where he shares his
experience with others and speaks about his tower project.
Recently he has been speaking before the FCC on WISP
related issues.
Rick
has served for 7 years on the board of directors for his local
Economic Development Corporation, writes Internet articles for
the local newspaper and is active in the local community.
On the side he races a drag boat and organizes and
promotes professional boat races on the Sacramento River in
Colusa.
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