Eidnet

EIDNet High-Speed Internet. Serving the County of Newell for over 20 Years.

In 1994, the Eastern Irrigation District was looking into obtaining internet access for its main office in Brooks. At the time, there was no one providing internet for people who lived in the Eastern Irrigation District. After much research they found that it would be easier to become an Internet Service Provider to its rural water users than to just get an internet connection for just themselves. The EID found partners to provide their main feed and the EIDNet went live with 16 dial-up connections in June of 1995. Shortly afterwards the dial-up service expanded to 32 lines and eventually up to 64 lines.

As access to the internet grew, it soon became apparent that dial-up service was no longer “cutting it” for most users. The EIDNet then began researching high-speed options because once again none of the “big providers” were interested in the small rural markets like ours. In June of 2004 the EIDNet, with the help of partners in Calgary, started providing high speed wireless internet to our customers through a series of 12 towers. Within a couple of years the number of towers had grown to 18 and we were servicing the majority of the County of Newell. In November of 2008 the last of the dial-up lines were shut down as most of our customers had switched to the higher speed wireless offerings.

Recently, with all of the video, music and high bandwidth services available on the internet, the demand for more bandwidth increased. The demand for more bandwidth continued to increase with the arrival of more video and music streaming services so the EIDNet expanded its staff, broke from its original partner and took on the job of becoming a stand alone service provider. The changes started in October of 2009 when the EIDNet went live with its own 100mb fiber optic feed which has since increased 20 fold. We then upgraded equipment at all of our tower sites, including the backhaul feeds between tower sites. These changes allowed us to provide a faster, more stable service to our users as well as larger variety of service plans. The last change is an upgrade to all the existing users of the EIDNet system that will let them enjoy the increased options we are making available.

Never ones to sit on their accomplishments, the EIDNet continues to upgrade their offerings in an effort to provide the best customer experience available in the area.
If you have any comments or questions feel free to contact us at eidnet@eidnet.org