Happy ALLOversary Nick!

Nick Colton, our Vice President of Information Technology,  is celebrating a big milestone with ALLO: 23 years with the company! He’s been here from the very beginning and occupied a variety of roles. We asked him to share his thoughts on ALLO and his time here. He provides some great insight on what we’re all about here, and we hope you’ll enjoy getting to know one of our favorite guys at ALLO.

I think the biggest difference working here versus a bigger company is that it’s not just work; we’re all helping build something special, both in the fiber we put in the ground and the services we provide customers, but also the culture at the company.  ALLO Fiber’s Founder asks how my kids are doing. I go over to my boss’s house for drinks after work from time to time, and my co-workers are also friends, and we care about each other.  That kind of personal attention didn’t exist in my previous jobs.  There’s also not a toxic political environment. If someone thinks a process or idea could be improved, we CAN stand up and say it. From field technicians to CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) to operations, we all have a voice, and it is heard.  As a member of the management team, we have striven to keep that culture alive at ALLO as we’ve grown from 3 employees up to the 1000+ employees we have today.

I worked at Dish Network in college doing phone support, then technical phone support, email support, and finally taking a job as a Technical Operations Coordinator.  I enjoyed the job but graduated, and the office politics, coupled with thoughts of starting a family once I married, made me think about returning to Nebraska.  Never did I think I’d find a technical job in my hometown of Imperial, NE, but that’s what ended up happening.

 I remember my first day at ALLO, sitting in our just-renovated Imperial, NE offices.  I think we had something like 12 cubicles then, and only 3 of us were working at the company at that time.  Our Founder, Brad Moline, dropped a giant binder on my desk, said, “Somewhere in here it tells us how we order lines from Qwest, and it’s your job to figure that out”.  It took me about 6 weeks, but we finally got our first order in to Qwest to convert a customer over to ALLO’s service.

I’ve had one job title here at ALLO, but have worn several hats over the years as the company has grown.

I manage our Network Operations group, tasked with keeping the ALLO network online and functioning day in and day out, and fixing the network when something goes wrong. I also act as our highest tier of technical support, handling the strange and unusual technical support issues.  I’m excited to take on the newly formed Technical Support Group, which will be handling technical support issues that our customer service representatives aren’t able to resolve.

Additionally, I take on design and engineering responsibilities at ALLO.  I plan for bandwidth capacity as our business and customer base grows. When we expand into a new market or new area and need equipment, it’s my job to determine what equipment we’re going to place out there, put project plans together, make sure we have equipment, and get documentation to our field technicians so they can install the equipment and begin turning services up for customers.

I also investigate new technologies.  It’s exciting to see what’s coming in the future and how we can use new technologies and solutions to not only make ALLO a better telecommunications company, but also how we can USE the technology to improve the lives of our customers as well as entice those who are not on ALLO yet to jump on the bandwagon.