ITS Fiber News

Business Expo ITS Fiber Gold Sponsor 2019

ITS Fiber was a Gold Sponsor at the Stuart Martin County Chamber Business Expo for the 8th Year in a Row. 

More than 400 people attended the Stuart/Martin County Chamber’s 9th annual Business Expo.

The Expo was held at Indian River State College, Wolf Technology Center. Vendors from all areas of business and technology presented their wares as attendees enjoyed networking and perusing the products and services on display

 


ITS Fiber News

 

Cesar Garcia headshot_2019-07 small

Cesar Garcia joins ITS Fiber as Systems Administrator in the IT Department

Cesar has over 20 year experience in IT with 15 years of them being with Medco Health Solutions/Liberty Medical in Port Saint Lucie.

Cesar fulfilled many Information Technology roles during those 15 years including Helpdesk Support, Telecom Support, IT Systems Support and more.

Cesar has a broad knowledge of systems and will be a valuable contributor to the ITS team.  - July 2019

 

Teen Summit

ITS Fiber in the Community

ITS Fiber Helped Support The Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Lucie County Teen Summit.  

ITS Fiber, helped educate children during The Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Lucie County Teen Summit at Indian River State College on June 27, 2019.

The Teen Summit is an annual event that was created in support of the BGC's mentoring initiative. The goal is to educate the children about the numerous job and career opportunities that are available to them locally.

The Summit included motivational speakers, breakout sessions, tours and a fashion show. Participants learned about: Their Personal Brand, Adulting, Career Readiness, Reality Check and Financial Aid & Scholarships.

Lesley Driver, Lead Creative Designer, talked about her job at ITS Fiber, what skills and education is needed to be successful in the graphic design industry, and the typical duties a designer is tasked with. She also showed the children samples of her design work.

During the breakout session, ITS Fiber and 30 other businesses had table displays set up where children and adults could walk around and ask questions.

About 150 teens, ages 13 and up, attended the event.

 

2019 Martin County Educators Tour

ITS Hosts a Tour for Martin County Educators

ITS Fiber one of four companies chosen for Professional Development Day Tour on February 15, 2019.  

Martin County Educators were given the opportunity to tour four local businesses in the area to introduce teachers and counselors to the career opportunities available right here in Martin County.

Not every student is geared towards college, but that doesn't mean they do not deserve the opportunity for a rewarding career. This tour sponsored by the Business Development Board of Martin County helped educators to learn about each business and what they have to offer graduating students who are planning to stay in Martin County, but may not go to a four-year college.

Denise Lechner, Marketing Manager, gave an overview of ITS Fiber and Indiantown Company services.

Jeff Meyer, Director of IT Services led the group on a tour of the Data Center. He also spoke about the education, job duties and certification required to work in the IT department

Executive Assistant and Human Resources Administrator, Stephanie Weeks, gave an overview of the types of jobs ITS Fiber and Indiantown Company offer and what she looks for in the candidates for each position. 

The 2019 tour also included on-site visits to Triumph Aerostructures, Hinckley Yacht Services, Awareness Technologies.

Interacting with local employers helps educators try to identify what jobs or careers are available to students, and what is required to land those types of positions. Tours like this one done by ITS Fiber enables teachers to design a curriculum that helps students to get the skill-set needed to go into the career or field they want to pursue.

Jeff and Denise Luncheon

Distinguished Speaker Luncheon

Fundraising luncheon to Benefit Boys & Girls Clubs of Martin County

ITS Fiber helped support the Boys & Girls Clubs of Martin County by attending their March 18th Distinguished Speaker Luncheon held at Sailfish Point Country Club. CEO of ITS Fiber, Jeff Leslie attended the lunch along with Marketing Manager, Denise Lechner. The event’s keynote speaker was Toby Cosgrove, recently retired CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic who is also a heart surgeon, Vietnam Veteran, and Heathcare Initiatives Consultant for Google, Inc.

Dr Toby Cosgrove smallDr. Cosgrove spoke of the transition between Cleveland Clinic and our local Martin Health System and the advantages this partnership will bring to our area. Additionally, he highlighted some of what he felt were current key health and medical-related issues, challenges and future endeavors needed for us locally, as well as, a nation. One of the “future” issues he spoke about was telemedicine and its continue emerging importance to assist with increasing the level of care to people in all areas of the country, especially rural areas and for those who can’t travel.

ITS Fiber is especially interested and involved in helping approach the telemedicine issue since having reliable, higher-speed internet technology available to communities plays a vital role in the success of this type of initiative.

 

2019 IEC Luncheon students

ITS Fiber Sponsors the Indiantown Education Coalition Fundraising Luncheon.

ITS Fiber was one of the sponsors for the Indiantown Education Coalition’s 23rd Annual Share the Love of Learning Fundraising Luncheon.

Employees of ITS Fiber assisted with the luncheon and the company donated resources and gift baskets for the fundraising raffle. The event was held on February 22, 2019 at Indiantown Middle School to help support college scholarships and classroom grants for Indiantown Students.

The Indiantown Education Coalition brings together business partners, educators and community members who are united in their commitment to provide greater educational opportunities to the students and teachers of Indiantown.

On the strength of its commitment to education, this group has taken a leadership role to prepare Indiantown's future workforce to meet the challenges of today and to prepare for the community's vision of the future.

Since 1996, the Indiantown Education Coalition has awarded over $350,000 for college scholarships, classroom grants, and teacher recognition. ITS Fiber contributes to this effort each year by giving the Bill Hannah Memorial Scholarship to a student who is pursuing a technology related career.

 

5th Annual VIP Customer Luncheon

ITS Fiber hosted their 5th annual Customer Appreciation Holidays Lunch to say "thank you" to business customers in a festive holiday setting.

2018.CustHolidayPty1The annual ITS Fiber Customer Holiday Luncheon was a huge success again this year at The Twisted Tuna on December 6th.

The festive setting had a nautical holiday theme and celebrated ITS Fiber customers as "treasures". There was a delicious lunch buffet, games, prizes and great conversation.

Additionally, our business customers all had a chance to introduce themselves and tell the group a little about their business. Interestingly, instead of taking that opportunity to promote what they do, many of them chose to speak about how happy they were with their ITS Fiber services and our employees!  We were very humble as it was all very unexpected.

CEO, Jeff Leslie also briefly introduced some of the new features and services ITS has in store for 2019.

We are so appreciative of our customers for their loyal support in 2018 and are looking forward to a spectacular New Year!

  

 

 

 

  

2018 ITS Fiber Calix Award

ITS Fiber Honored with Second Calix Innovation Award

Calix recognizes six broadband service providers
for outstanding achievements at ConneXions Event in Las Vegas

October 31, 2018
News Release

LAS VEGAS – October 31, 2018 – Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) today announced the winners of the 2018 Calix Innovation Awards. Local Treasure Coast firm, ITS Fiber was presented with The Calix Innovation Award for Innovations in Subscriber Experience, their second Innovation Award from the leading global communications software provider, Calix. ITS Fiber was honored in 2013 with an Innovation in Business Transformation Award from Calix for their launch of highly certified commercial data center in Indiantown, Florida.

ITS Fiber is among six other Calix Innovation Awards winners, who represent broadband leaders from three different countries. All were honored at the sold-out Calix ConneXions Innovation and User Conference earlier this week. Now in their eighth year, the Calix Innovation Awards recognize Calix customers who demonstrated outstanding creativity to deploy best-in-class services over the last 12 months. The awards showcase innovation in the use of cloud and software platforms, systems, and services to transform businesses models, networks, and the subscriber experience.

“Our partnership with Calix has been at the heart of our thriving business for many years, and it is an honor to be recognized as one of the 2018 Calix Innovation Award winners,” said Jeff Leslie, president and CEO of ITS Fiber. “Through our deployments of Calix Support Cloud, the Calix GigaCenter routers, and 804Mesh Wi-Fi units, our Whole Home Wi-Fi service has taken off, not only driving new service revenues, but also enabling a differentiated subscriber experience in the home. As we look ahead to Calix Smart Home and Business, we can’t wait to take that service to the next level and cement our place as the smart home tech experts for our subscribers.”

The 2018 Calix Innovation Award winners for Innovations in Subscriber Experience are:

  • ALLO Communications
  • ITS Fiber
  •  Nex-Tech

The 2018 Calix Innovation Award winners for Innovations in Next Generation Networks are:

  • CityFibre
  • Gibson Connect
  • HDC

About Calix

Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) – Innovative communications service providers rely on Calix platforms to help them master and monetize the complex infrastructure between their subscribers and the cloud. Calix is the leading global provider of the cloud and software platforms, systems, and services required to deliver the unified access network and smart premises of tomorrow. Their platforms and services help customers build next generation networks by embracing a DevOps operating model, optimize the subscriber experience by leveraging big data analytics and turn the complexity of the smart home and business into new revenue streams.

Fiber Expansion

ITS Hosts Community Meetings About Fiber Network Expansion

In late January 2019, ITS Fiber hosted two community meetings with the Indiantown residents from “Springhaven” and “Clementsville” areas to discuss and propose various options for bringing fiber-optic services to their communities.

These were two areas (among a couple others in our service territory) where ITS Fiber was not able to complete construction in our initial fiber overbuild done in 2008-2011.

CEO, Jeff Leslie, spoke to the residents at each meeting and outlined the background of why the fiber overbuild was not completed a few years ago. He explained that due to federal government regulatory changes in 2012, the government support we were relying on was reduced and the certainty of its continuance was placed in doubt. Accordingly, ITS was forced to discontinue our construction of fiber in outlying areas of Indiantown causing us to leave some customers with their existing Internet solution.

Mr. Leslie then commented that a new initiative was announced in December 2018 by the FCC to restore financial support that would allow ITS to upgrade its DSL (copper) network to provide broadband speeds up to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up to qualified areas over the next few years. He further noted that the USDA just announced a plan to make a limited amount of grant funds available to qualified rural broadband providers (like ITS Fiber) to be used for potential network upgrades. Although we are uncertain if ITS will be able to qualify, we’re planning to apply for those grant funds in May of 2019. We do not know, however, when the USDA will notify the grant winners of their status.

In the interim, ITS Fiber plans to continue to meet with our local communities who are not yet on fiber services to identify their interest in receiving fiber services or if they will be content with an upgraded 25/3 Mbps DSL solution. The January meetings with Springhaven and Clementsville gave us a lot of useful input and the majority of those residents who attended, chose to move forward with a fiber services solution if their communities can each get 50% of residents to agree to the fiber upgrade and cost-sharing plan presented by ITS.

  

5th Annual VIP Customer Luncheon

ITS Fiber hosted their 5th annual Customer Appreciation Holidays Lunch to say "thank you" to business customers in a festive holiday setting.

2018.CustHolidayPty1The annual ITS Fiber Customer Holiday Luncheon was a huge success again this year at The Twisted Tuna on December 6th.

The festive setting had a nautical holiday theme and celebrated ITS Fiber customers as "treasures". There was a delicious lunch buffet, games, prizes and great conversation.

Additionally, our business customers all had a chance to introduce themselves and tell the group a little about their business. Interestingly, instead of taking that opportunity to promote what they do, many of them chose to speak about how happy they were with their ITS Fiber services and our employees!  We were very humble as it was all very unexpected.

CEO, Jeff Leslie also briefly introduced some of the new features and services ITS has in store for 2019.

We are so appreciative of our customers for their loyal support in 2018 and are looking forward to a spectacular New Year!

 

Rodeo - Jeff and Bruce

Jeff Leslie, President/CEO & Bruce Russell, Vice President/CFO - ITS Fiber

Indiantown Rodeo Logo

ITS Fiber was the Presenting Sponsor of the 2018 Indiantown Rodeo 
ITS Fiber was the Presenting Sponsor for the Annual Indiantown Rodeo, held on Friday, October 19th – Saturday, October 20th, 2018 in Indiantown, Florida.

The Rodeo was put on by the Indiantown Chamber of Commerce, 4L & Diamond S Rodeo and the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association). It attracted approximately 5,000 spectators per night to Timer Powers Park in Indiantown.

As Presenting Sponsor, ITS Fiber hosted the VIP tent where over 400 or more guests, sponsors and local dignitaries gathered each night to enjoy the show.  A special Saturday night after-party and concert by up-and-coming country singer, Jess Lee was also a highlight of the two -day festivities.

Events at rodeo included: Bareback Bronc Riding | Barrels | Bull Riding | Cowgirl's Barrel Racing | Open Barrel Racing | Saddle Bronc Riding | Steer Wrestling | Team Roping.

ITS Fiber thanks all their customers and guests who attended the rodeo this year and the Indiantown Chamber of Commerce who helped make the evening one to remember!

 

 

Mike Gonzalez - ITS Fiber Sales Associate

Dances with the Martin Stars 2018

Dancing with the stars group
 
Mike recently competed as one of seven contestants at the Dancing with the Martin Stars for 2018 at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Stuart.

Dancing with the Martin Stars is an annual fundraising event for The Martin County Healthy Start Coalition to help support and provide education to pregnant women and infants.
 
Each of the contestant are also competing to raise the most money for cause. The results from their individual fundraising efforts will be combined with their dance scores to determine the overall winner.
 
Mike challenged himself to stand out to be Noticeably Better from the other contestants by combining 3 different dance styles, (the Salsa, Merengue, and the Cha Cha Cha) into one dance routine.  Mike and his dance partner, Jill Bogacik, were the only contestants to showcase more than one dance style in a single number.  Their efforts paid off.  He "wowed" the crowd and the judges with his personality and style, earning him a score of 29 out of 30 in the dance competition.
 
Mike was able to raise $15,002 through his own fundraising efforts. The 2018 combined team raised over $159,000 for the babies and families of Martin County Healthy Start Coalition, Inc.
 
 

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