Early Fort Collins internet provider FRII pulls the plug

Pat Ferrier, Fort Collins Coloradoan
·2 min read

Before there was Connexion, before there was broadband, there was Front Range Internet Inc., a local company providing internet services to Fort Collins and Northern Colorado.

Now FRII is shutting its doors by the end of the year, citing increased competition, rising fiber rates and escalating employee costs.

FRII said on its website the business as a whole has suffered from a "number of headwinds."

The company, started by father and son Bill and Brad Ward in 1995 as the World Wide Web was just coming into its own, was sold in 2016 to an investment group headed by Halton J. Peters.

FRII said on its website it is working closely with Loveland Pulse and Fort Collins Connexion to transition customers to them as an interim solution to keep customers connected without interruption. Customers who don't want Connexion or Pulse are asked to contact FRII as soon as possible.

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FRII recently sold its fixed wireless business to Vistabeam Internet, a transition that will take place over the next two months.

Email, web hosting, dial-up customers and dedicated servers will continue to be serviced by FRII until the end of the year, the company said.

When the company first started in late 1995, it grew rapidly. It had signed up 50 customers before servers went online, according to Coloradoan archives.

During the following months, the customers continued to call. FRII added 100 to 200 accounts each month.

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By 2000 it had about 9,000 accounts and was still growing, adding as many as 400 accounts each month up and down the Front Range. As it added customers, it added staff.

In 2014 it expanded its commercial data center in Fort Collins from 1,200 square feet to 3,800 square feet as the data center neared capacity and demand for service grew.

The expanded data center also supported continued economic expansion of Fort Collins and the surrounding areas.

But as the internet grew in popularity, so did the number of internet service providers. Today, the cities of Fort Collins and Loveland offer their own broadband, as do national companies such as Comcast, Xfinity, Century Link and others.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins internet provider Front Range Internet to shut down