Photo Caption:  Congratulations to State Street Dairy of Onaway, for being the first official business to be connected to PIE&G Connect fiber internet service. Pictured (L to R) Jason MacArthur – Senior Service Technician,  Tom Sobeck – President & CEO, Cassie DeMaestri – Owner, State Street Dairy, and Ruthanne Largent – Director of Broadband Operations.

 

Over the last 18 months, the PIE&G Connect team has been working hard behind the scenes building its fiber internet network, outlining processes and developing its internal procedures and business systems to support its new fiber internet division.  In preparation for launching its first public connections, PIE&G Connect created a pilot program, where a handful of local residents were asked to participate while PIE&G tested various aspects of the new fiber system. One of the business test cases was the State Street Dairy, in Onaway. We spoke to owner, Cassie DeMaestri, about her fiber internet service during the trial pilot program.  “I was using my personal hotspot to place my orders and perform online banking, but the upload and download speeds were very slow.  For daily customer sales, I was using a SIM card in my Point of Sale (POS) system.  I don’t know what the speeds were – I just know everything was extremely slow, if it was working at all.”

Cassie explained that her goal at State Street Dairy, is to have customers in and out with the best service they can provide.  “Using the SIM card in my POS system, customers would be waiting for the machine to receive signal to process their payment. Honestly, we all know how that can be different from day-to-day.  Some days it worked okay but others, we would have to find reception, which became very time consuming.  It was the same with my ordering of supplies. I would have to find a good place that had reception. That usually meant I ended up outside so that I could place orders with my distributors.”

When asked how she would describe the difference between her prior service and now, Cassie said, “PIE&G fiber has been a life saver!  My POS system transactions are now so fast. My customers have also noticed the difference in how fast payments are processed. They have no wait time at all, now that I have fiber. I can do my online banking and ordering anywhere in my store. The reception and speed are simply amazing.”  She added, “I could not do without this fiber internet service.  It has made serving our customers faster at State Street Dairy, and that makes them happy too. I would recommend this service to anyone.”