REANET Bypasses US West; Denver as Dot.Com Test Market.

• Author: KERVEN, ANNE
• Position: Brief Article

They're quick. Tri-Corners Telecommunications Inc. just acquired and renamed itself REANET Corp. and expanded its Four Corners/Durango/Albuquerque territory to include all of Colorado's rural areas south of 1-70. And its officials are eyeing more.

TCT co-founded REANET with Delta Montrose Electric Association and Sangre de Cristo Electric Association in 1999 to see if partnering with rural electric companies would help expansion. "The answer was 'yes'," said Larry Martin, REANET spokesman. DMEA and SCEA will remain shareholders. "Rural electrics provide a great deal of strength because they're grounded in the community, they have an ethic of service," and they're already providing services and have an existing infrastructure, such as electrical poles, for wiring. REANET in March started construction of an Albuquerque-to-Durango network. By the end of summer 2001, it will have 1,200 miles of fiber optic in rural Colorado alone. REANET is close to partnerships with four more REAs, which Martin wouldn't name. He also noted REANET is an independent telecom network and Colorado's only one, meaning the company will build its own fiber optic network, with unlimited bandwidth, as opposed to other providers, who rely on buying, then reselling, US West's wiring -- usually low-bandwidth copper wiring in rural areas, he said. REANET also recently was certified as a CLEC, or competitive local exchange carrier, by the PUC. [ldots]

Under "did you know" -- Companies that apply for H-1B visas pay $1,000 (now growing to $2,000) each for the process. (H-lB is a temporary work visa for foreigners in "specialty occupations," often requiring higher degrees.) The money goes into a pot at the U.S. Department of Labor and other agencies to fund training -- usually tech training -- of American workers, said Cathy Ewing, executive director of the Colorado Software Association in Denver. Ewing was just back from a Chicago status-of-the-workforce seminar. Over the past two years, the pot's pulled in $60 million, and only $13 million has been dispersed, she said. Ewing also found that one in 14 jobs nationally is a...