03/21/2025
Carolina AirLink is celebrating 4 years of business this month!! Honestly it has been the most challenging and stressful year, but also the most rewarding one we have had yet. For the past few years we have been fighting another big corporate internet provider from coming into our coverage areas. To clarify we were not fighting to prevent them from coming, we know every business has competitors. We were fighting to prevent them from getting government funded grant money to do it. Our area got the shaft for years when no one wanted to bring internet to us, so we decided to do it ourselves-100 percent self funded by Brad and I. Then 2021 comes along with government grants for internet providers and all of a sudden all the big corporate companies are all of a sudden so concerned about our area and the service we have. Why is that- because they are not having to fork out the money to do it on their own- they got to use our money (our tax dollars). Weird to me that internet providers will not bring you service on their own when that is what that are there for. They want tax dollars to do it. With these grants they receive thousands of dollars per household to bring it to you (it costs nowhere near that much to provide it to one house-just another way to receive way more than they actually need), then they charge you for it monthly when you already paid tax dollars to have it put in the area and to the home. They have to repay a small percentage of that grant back, but think about all the money they pocket when homes and properties don’t even sign up for the service, but they receive money for them anyway. All of their overseas investors are sitting pretty right now with all this extra hand out money in their pockets. The years of filing protests and our lawyers and us fighting ended up in their favor, and they got the money anyway, because let’s be honest big corporate gets favored by the government and small business gets the short end of the stick. Quite frankly both sides are crooked and grease each others pockets to get what they want. We don’t support government handouts of any type, but when it can affect your business, it hits even harder. Call me crazy, but I just don’t think giving a billion dollar company that is millions in debt and changes names more times than I can count more millions was the right answer. Just government wasting more money. 🤷♀️
Fast forward to them bringing their service in our area and stooping to the level of going door to door to every house we cover in that area and bad mouthing us and spreading false information about our business. The videos of this that customers sent us when they came to their doors is comical I have to say. These people they hired to go around slandering us do not even know what internet is to be honest. They even went to my parents house to sell them internet and bad mouth us, lie about our service, and had no clue who they were speaking to. They got an earful at that house! 🤣 They tried really hard to entice people with “free” gift cards to sign up-yet again that is tax dollars you already give on those so called gift cards.
Finally, the most rewarding part of all of this the last year-In the end it has all worked out in our favor and our customers are the pure definition of loyal. There were many times we just felt defeated and wanted to give up, but we didn’t because our customers are like our family and we will do whatever it takes to keep them happy. I know every single one on a first name basis and know exactly where they live and who they are. This company came in swinging and played dirty to attempt to take us out, but they got instant karma when they realized how much support we have. A whole community that rallies for us. Hundreds stood up for us and stood by us, and that feeling is unmatched. They chose a small husband and wife company over a large billion dollar company that could care less about their customers or customer service. We are extremely thankful for all the homes, farms, and businesses we service and strive to have many more. Thank you to each and every one of you that are part of our AirLink family. We will always be grateful for you and never forget that without you we wouldn’t have made it this far. Cheers to many more years of business, and many more fighting big corporate and government! 😉
The Cox Family
