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Critical infrastructure Barrett Xplore Inc. is building wireless networks in rural areas

Barrett Xplore Inc., Canada's largest rural broadband Internet provider, is building its business by going where the lines from Bell, Telus, Rogers and others stop.

This week, the Woodstock-based firm took another bold step to extend its cross-country presence by acquiring a swath of 3.5GHz wireless spectrum from Alberta to New Brunswick.

The acquisition, from Toronto-based MIPPS Inc., extends Barrett's national reach to four million people from two million across Canada by giving it the ability to build wireless networks in new rural areas. The 3.5GHz spectrum is considered to be ideal for broadband wireless networks.

The move furthers Barrett Xplore's efforts to beam high-speed Internet access to rural Canadians who have found themselves without service because phone and cable companies find it too expensive to bring high-speed wired Internet service to their doors.

The company's fixed wireless and satellite-based broadband Internet services are also helping level the playing field for rural-based businesses by allowing them to tap into the power and potential of the Internet at speeds comparable to urban areas.

The firm, launched in 2005 in the hometown of the entrepreneurial Barrett family, is poised to become the province's next major telecommunications star.

Barrett Xplore Inc. was born out of Barrett Corp., a number of diverse wholesaling enterprises founded by Malcolm Barrett and now co-led by sons Bill and Ed Barrett. The satellite Internet enterprise seemed a natural extension of their successes with satellite television and, to some extent, Arctic Cat snowmobiles.

"Bill has said from time to time that distribution is in their DNA," says J.W. (Bud) Bird, a prominent Fredericton businessman and a member of the Barrett advisory board.

"They are two of the most entrepreneurial people I have ever met and they have an appetite for risk-taking that is larger than many entrepreneurs I have known," Bird says.

"They have also demonstrated some considerable skill at keeping their visions, aspirations and risks under reasonable balance and control."

For Ed Barrett, getting into the broadband Internet market was a natural evolution after Barrett Xplore's successful foray into the satellite television service through the Direct Choice and Star Choice services.

It provided the sales, distribution and marketing support for both, developing relationships with more than 3,000 independent dealers and more than 2,500 trained installers across the country.

While the Barretts sold off those interests and their earlier venture in Arctic Cat vehicles, they used those relationships to build broadband service across the country.

Ed Barrett speaks of satellite, and now wireless, Internet networks as an essential service and his company's work as a public service.

"Broadband communication is, and is going to be more so, critical infrastructure throughout the country and throughout the world. It will not be acceptable in future years, and some would say it's not acceptable today to not have access to broadband, regardless of where you live or where your business is," he says in an interview.

"We have the great good fortune to be in a business that, while we are accomplishing business results, because we bring broadband to non-urban Canada, we are actually doing a public good."

It is clear Barrett takes pride in his company's dual satellite and fixed wireless Internet services, a combination that makes his company stand out amongst competitors and enables it to reach all parts of Canada.

"Unless you're in a cave or under a rock, we can reach you across this country with broadband," he says.

Observers argue the company is a leader in New Brunswick's third major telecommunications and information technology wave - following earlier revolutions by NBTel in the early 1990s and the dot-com boom at the dawn of this century.

Saint John businessman and former NBTel CEO Gerry Pond describes Barrett Xplore as being of the same calibre as NBTel, a telephone company hailed for innovation.

"If I look at the timing of some of things they're doing with satellite and wireless for so-called remote or rural areas, I think the timing for that is now - the same way it was for NBTel with digital," Pond says.

"I think a company like Barrett is really going to change the equation of what's available in rural in areas in terms of service, quality and price."

Integral to the firm's success is the Barrett brothers' choice in a CEO - in launching the enterprise, they recruited John Maduri, a veteran of both Rogers Inc. and Telus Corp. who brought with him a wealth of experience in cable, cellular and Internet services.

He bought into the Barrett vision of bringing high-speed service to families and companies in the country served only by dial-up.

"We heard the personal message, 'My kids want to get access to this website, I want to get access to this content.' It was very much about personal applications - voiceover IP, surfing the web, online banking, all those personal, individual things," says Maduri, who today spends a good chunk of his time talking to community and business leaders about how his company can solve their problems.

Speaking on his cell phone while travelling back from meetings in northern Ontario, he says rural leaders are anxious to find ways to create new jobs while keeping young people at home.

"They have a vision. They want to see their communities rejuvenated, renewed, made stronger and they're being absolutely aggressive and creative in ensuring they get broadband access to allow for that to occur."

The company has invested more than $110 million in developing new technology and bigger networks, the bulk of it from the Barrett family themselves or by private investors won over by their vision.

This year, Barrett Xplore is expecting to surpass $100 million in gross revenues and has ambitious plans to expand its business.

This week's deal with MIPPs, terms of which were not disclosed, may just be the start.

While residential services represent about 80 per cent of the company's focus, it's also increasingly servicing companies in rural or remote areas like the Alberta oil sands.

"So many companies focus on the urban markets and Barrett really doesn't look at the urban markets at all," says Mark Goldberg, an Ontario-based telecommunications analyst who liked what the company was doing so much he joined its advisory board.

"Their key target, and what they've been successful at, is serving the under-served - going where the other service providers aren't focusing and yet where there is still quite a need."