ERF Wireless News article just out. Oct 25, 2013
Post# of 6702
ERF Wireless to spend millions to upgrade Eagle Ford, other Texas networks
ERF Wireless, a provider of wireless broadband services to the oil and gas industry, will spend “several million” dollars to upgrade its Texas networks, including those in the Eagle Ford Shale, its top officer says.
Enlarge
ERF Wireless, a provider of wireless broadband services to the oil and gas industry, will spend “several million” dollars to upgrade its Texas networks, including those in the Eagle Ford Shale, its top officer says.
ERF Wireless, a provider of wireless broadband services to the oil and gas industry, will spend “several million” dollars to upgrade its Texas networks, including those in the Eagle Ford Shale, its top officer says.
The League City, Texas-based company has purchased 16 broadband providers since its founding in 2004 and has sights on more companies as it looks to improve its coverage in the Eagle Ford Shale-producing region, CEO Dean Cubley says. He declined to identify its current acquisition targets.
“We’ve got two candidates down there right now,” Cubley says. “One is more likely than the other.”
ERF also may erect additional transmission towers in the thriving oil-and-gas play to expand coverage and network capacity. The company spends roughly $25,000 per new tower, Cubley adds.
ERF’s Energy Broadband Inc. subsidiary uses both licensed and unlicensed bandwidth to deliver wireless high-speed Internet service to drilling rigs and other remote business sites without traditional broadband coverage.
Oil-and-gas clients can use the network for data, wireless intercom systems and GPS-based 911 systems.
When Houston Business Journal talked to Cubley a year ago, he said the company was about to earn a profit for the first time in its history.
The company’s network currently covers 450,000 square miles, mostly in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma. It has spent $19 million since 2004 on acquisitions and new towers, according to Cubley.
ERF’s Eagle Ford coverage currently extends from Victoria north to Cuero and west to Cotulla. But Cubley says he wants to fill in gaps near Interstate 10, a hotbed of oil drilling activity, and in the formation’s gas-rich south.
“It’s a matter of being nimble enough to go where the rigs are,” he adds.
As part of ERF’s efforts to meet growing demand in the Eagle Ford and West Texas’ Permian Basin, the company also recently hired two additional salespeople and beefed up its staff of technicians.
“We hired six new techs in the last 30 days, and we’re looking for just as many right now,” Cubley adds.