Before moving to Tennessee, Eric Olson spent 15 years at Best Buy as a computer and network consultant. In that role, he worked with his fair share of frustrated internet customers.
“The difference between bad connectivity and good connectivity is huge,” said Eric, a United Communications broadband customer in the Nolensville area. “Poor connectivity can really impact your emotional well-being and your sanity, but it can also directly impact your finances.”
Today, Eric manages business relationships at First Horizon Bank. With twin daughters keeping them busy, he and his wife often work from home.
“If we didn’t have a consistent connection, I would lose lending opportunities, and my wife wouldn’t be able to log on to do her bookkeeping,” he explained. “And if you can’t stay connected on a video call with your client, they can lose confidence in your ability to do your job.”
More importantly, says Eric, reliable internet service can determine how you stay connected with the ones you love most.
“Family is the most important thing, and my daughters can see, hear, and talk to their relatives over thousands of miles at any time,” said Eric. “It means they can connect with their grandpa who lives in Detroit, and that time spent together means volumes to our family.”
As a Project UNITE customer, Eric is one of more than 13,000 Tennesseans who now have access to high-speed internet service despite living in rural communities.
Recent surveys show that the typical American household has 25 internet-connected devices at home. The Olson household is no exception with multiple work laptops, kids’ streaming devices, and a wide array of other WiFi-connected gadgets at home, including an Alexa-enabled device in nearly every room.
With available speeds of up to 1 Gbps, Eric and his family can stream or download 4K movies, TV shows, and large files for work or school in seconds. United’s parental control options also make it easy to block content that isn’t appropriate for children.
On average, families like Eric’s consume around 435 GB of data each month. And while some providers impose data cap thresholds as low as 10 GB, United’s limitless data policy means customers don’t have to worry about overage fees or throttled connection speeds.
While those are valuable benefits of United’s broadband service, it’s the company’s commitment to excellent customer service that he values most of all.
“Being a networking guy, I can’t tell you the number of times that I saw customers lose it just waiting on hold with their internet providers,” he reflected. “I’ve had to make those calls on behalf of others pretty regularly. That makes me love United even more.”
When asked how United’s service compares to other companies he’s encountered, Eric’s response is simple.
“There is no comparison,” he explained. “We’ve never had an outage other than when lightning struck a connection box, so I never really need to call. But when I do, I tend to get the same representative each time. Someone picks up right away. And someone comes out within a day, which is unheard of with other companies.”
As a local company, United’s employees are proud to live and work in the same communities they serve.
“As a banker, I’m out in the community a lot. And United is also involved with pretty much every event I go to,” said Eric. “When I first signed up with United, I wouldn’t have said being local was an important factor. But after working with them for eight years, I’ve changed my mind.”
Learn more about Project UNITE.