PARAGOULD.NET - Internet Service Provider for Paragould and Greene County

Grnco.net, the Internet Division of Paragould City Light Water and Cable, offers dial-up and high-speed cable Internet access to the residents and businesses of Paragould and Greene County in northeast Arkansas. Our Web-hosting servers provide a home for Web sites in northeast Arkansas and around the world using state-of-the-art technology.

Our Commitment

At Grnco.net, our commitment is to our customers first and foremost. We believe in providing an affordable and dependable Internet service that is second-to-none. We harness proven ideas and work toward innovative solutions for our subscribers. In our opinion, the ultimate achievement for any business is to improve the lives of its employees, customers and community.

A Brief History

In August 1997, the CIS department of City Light Water & Cable, then consisting of Farron Toler and Joseph Kerby, began researching the idea of getting into the telecommunications business, more specifically, becoming an Internet Service Provider. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, adopted the previous year, had opened up the market to municipal governments. Also, it was determined that there were no ISP’s who had there office’s and personnel in Greene County. Rumors were swirling that Southwestern Bell was going to change the way that they handled remote points of presence (POP) and that some of the existing providers might drop Greene County entirely.

CLWC started negotiating contracts for T1’s and frame relay circuits with Southwestern Bell in October of 1997. On December 17, 1997, Grnco.net officially began service with 2 T1’s for inbound calls, and 768 kbs of a T1 frame relay for a backbone to Little Rock. Our first customer was former CLWC General Manager, John McDaniel. The name Grnco.net was chosen in reference to Greene County. CLWC officials decided that since we would be serving any customer who could call Paragould as a local exchange, that the name needed to be independent of the local utility.

The utility continued to operate Grnco.net as a dialup only Internet Service Provider until circumstances surrounding the city owned cable system changed with the buy out of a competing cable provider in 1999. City Light Water & Cable started a rebuild of the cable system in 2001 that included 33 miles of fiber optic cable in preparation for offering enhanced data and video services to the citizens of Paragould. Cable modem service launched in Beta areas in December of 2001, and now accounts for 1/3 of the customers on Grnco.net’s system.