Welcome to my new blog. First, I would like to introduce myself…my name is Mike Ruley, and I’m the CEO at Sparkplug Communications. As I reflect on our business and set goals for 2010, I plan to use this blog as a venue to share my personal thoughts on trends in our industry, technology advancements and other noteworthy topics that I believe in some way will impact our business or our customers.

There are still a lot of misconceptions about fixed wireless networks, which is the type of network that Sparkplug operates. It’s quite different from the “mobile” cellular network, where you are moving from tower to tower for your phone reception as you move. A fixed wireless connection is just that – a straight shot from the tower to the customer site with dedicated bandwidth all the way. The bandwidth itself is fixed, and, if the link is “licensed” (meaning the FCC has given approval for Sparkplug to operate exclusively in that frequency), it’s 100% guaranteed.

I spent most of my career running companies with a fixed line infrastructure, providing access to customers. The wonderful thing about wireless networks is that backhoes can’t fly… meaning all of the outages caused by fiber cuts that I dealt with previously don’t happen on a wireless network. And no matter how efficient your wireline provider is, they can’t beat the install timeframes for nailing up a wireless link – which can literally occur as soon as we install the radio on a roof – meaning days, not weeks.

2009 was a challenging year for all businesses, Sparkplug included. Our customers were suffering the impacts of the economic downturn and cutting budgets, including IT spending. What I learned is that when you work with customers during these tough times, and help them meet their budget targets, they stick with you. That kind of partnership, along with a highly reliable network, is helping us to emerge stronger than ever.

I am excited to begin this blog as the year closes out, and to look forward with you to 2010 to share my vision as we enter the new year. Come back often.