For a local Cochrane couple their success story is that of an admirable one.
Jason and Tara Marsland, owners of Velocity Networks Inc., began their business venture back in 2008. Living on a ranch they were frustrated with no reliable internet within their rural community. So an idea was put out into cyberspace and fast forward 11 years and the couple has created a dominant business with a strong customer base.
"We started with three towers, we started with Cremona, Westbrook and Cochrane Lakes and before we knew it, we had 230 customers," said Tara Marsland. "We wanted to be able to offer something that we would be willing to pay for. That's speed, that's pricing, that's the honesty and integrity of a company and transparency."
Jason Marsland grew up in Cochrane and attended Cochrane High School. He was on the football team and a pretty cheerleader by the name of Tara - originally from B.C. - would catch his eye. A typical high school romance eventually blossomed to marriage and onward to business partners.
The pair strive to execute dependable and reliable service and although their journey hasn't been all cupcakes and rainbows they have certainly become a staple for rural internet and continue to branch out where the demand is needed.
"We have now expanded to 21 towers," explains Jason. "We track where people call in from, we try and follow that as much as we can. Once we get a number of calls from a certain area we start to say 'OK that's an area we need to focus on.'"
Velocity Networks now services the communities of Chestermere, Balzac and Strathmore with a 300 ft tower as well as Cremona, Cochrane, Ghost Lake, Highway 8 and Trans Canada by Canada Olympic Park, offering a vast area of coverage.
For almost a decade the pair worked out of their home office. Tara would cook meals for staff meetings and it wasn't until roughly a year ago that duo set up shop on River Ave - a long time coming.
In January the hope is to offer a 5G ultra speed, wireless solution for local businesses. A service already offered by Velocity just with more oomph following the Town of Cochrane and Fibre West's deployment of fibre throughout certain areas of town based on desire and need.
"As the town puts in their fibre we offer internet over their fibre so that these new businesses have access to super high quality internet and what we're doing as a build on is also offering this 5G or ultra high speed internet to businesses in the area. Depending on where they are it's a fixed wireless connection but you're getting fibre speeds under very short distances," explains Jason.
Another forte for Velocity is they now offer TV making them able to compete in the big leagues. Soon they will be offering TV, phone and internet as a bundle package, something Tara said "people love."
"It's a turn key solution, we can walk in and offer a complete solution for all the needs. Business or residential phones is all part of what we will be able to do. A TV solution that has all the same channels as any of the big players, so it's finding out what people want and then confirming that we have the ability to deliver in a quality way," said Jason.
Keeping their involvement in the community at the forefront, Jason and Tara are no strangers to giving back to Cochrane.
"Every year we've done a pay it forward to a family in need in Cochrane or surrounding area," said Tara.
"We ask clients and friends and anybody to see who is in need, who's had a real rough year or rough month. Get us the story, get us the information. We try and narrow it down to just one person and then we give them a cheque for $500 so that they can enjoy Christmas a little bit better. Typically - completely by accident, a bunch of presents show up for the kids on top of the donation so it's just a little something extra to help the community as best we can," continued Jason.
Jason and Tara believe that being local will give them an advantage in their future endeavours and value their customers as well as their close-knit staff, whom they say, no cliche intended but are just like family.
