ABBEVILLE — At an event celebrating the completion of another project by Cajun Broadband, the little internet company that could, there were speeches by local officials, a video message from Gov. Jeff Landry, a ribbon-cutting.

And there was seafood gumbo, cooked the night before by Chris Disher, the company’s co-founder.

His grandmother made her gumbo with tomatoes, but Disher skipped them, knowing the crowd, and used shrimp and oysters harvested from parish waters.

The gathering in Vermilion Parish, like much of what Cajun Broadband does, had a personal feel that belied a bigger truth: The company is among those leading Louisiana’s push to bring speedy internet to the state’s rural reaches.

This fall, it won $18.2 million in federal funding from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD, to connect another 4,000 homes and businesses. This month, they’ll be among the companies breaking ground with that funding: “We’re small, so we can build fast,” Disher said.

Already, the Broussard-based company provides fiber internet across Acadiana, in a doughnut-like shape surrounding Lafayette. In 2023, Inc. Magazine named it among the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. — landing at 603 out of 5,000 and fourth among those based in Louisiana.

“We kept doubling the size every year,” Disher said, “because we didn’t understand just how big this need was in the rural communities.”

Humble beginnings

But it started in 2017 with an antenna in a pine tree.

Disher’s two then-teenage sons had been nagging him for years about the slow, spotty internet. One Sunday before church, they’d hooked up their Xbox for a software update, “and the game wasn’t even 5% done updating after being gone for like three and a half hours,” said his son Matthew.

Meanwhile, Chris Disher’s close friend and now partner Jimmy Lewis, an IT professional struggling with his own internet service, had been driving by an empty tower on his way to work each day.

He wondered: What if we put an antenna on that?

They got the OK, grabbed a chain saw and mounted a dish. “And Chris is hollering up at me, ‘We’ve got 60 megs!” Lewis said, short for 60 megabytes per second. “We’ve got 60 megs!”

They hooked up one neighbor, then another, then 10. They kept their day jobs, at first, working nights and weekends.

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Within two years, they had more than 1,000 customers, said Daniel Romero Jr., operations manager. (Disher declined to give a current count, but the company’s website touts “nearly 10,000 customers across seven Louisiana parishes.”)

“We just kept going and kept building and kept working,” said Lewis, Cajun’s managing director.

When Louisiana’s Granting Underserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities, or GUMBO, program was announced, Disher bought a nice tie and went door-to-door, parish to parish. In late 2022, with nearly $20 million in GUMBO funding, Cajun Broadband installed some 90,000 feet of fiber in St. Martin Parish.

It was the first completed project in the state under GUMBO, whose mission is in its name. Cajun Broadband competed with and beat bigger companies to nab GUMBO funds, said Veneeth Iyengar, executive director for the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity.

“They bootstrapped this business,” he said. “They saw a need in their community that was not fulfilled, and they decided to bootstrap it through entrepreneurial capitalism and build a business which is now impacting thousands of lives.”

Still, the business has stayed small and nimble. Ask an employee how many of them there are, and they’ll begin ticking off names, counting the number on two hands. It feels like family, said Steven Creduer, field supervisor. “I’m leaving my house to go to my other house.”

Disher’s son, Matthew, works in the field as a splicer now. Romero’s daughter works for the company, too.

Employees exchange “Merry Christmas” texts with customers. Many of them had long struggled to use Zoom, to upload and to stream, and were thrilled to spot Cajun Broadband’s trailer on their rural roads. Technicians see firsthand how people rely on the internet for necessities, from health care to homework.

“People are really happy you’re there,” Disher said.

‘Issues on top of issues’

A Louisiana-born-and-educated engineer, Disher hadn’t yearned to be an entrepreneur, the 55-year-old said. “I never wanted to do anything on my own.”

For years, he worked for General Electric in the oil fields of Singapore and Brazil, eventually supporting six regions from Broussard — but traveling often. Then GE downsized, and Disher lost his job.

With his wife’s encouragement, he became Cajun Broadband’s first full-time employee, he said. “She just kept saying, ‘You can do it, you can do it.’”

At first, he felt responsible to his family, his mortgage in mind. Then, he felt responsible for the company’s employees, their families in mind. Now, he feels responsible for the region and its residents.

Several broadband customers were in at the LSU Ag Center office in Abbeville for last month’s ribbon-cutting, which marked the completion of three broadband projects in Vermillion Parish comprising some 500,000 feet of fiber to 1,750 homes and businesses. 

Among the beneficiaries: Michelle Romero, a 38-year-old mother, nurse and health coach who can now upload her workout videos in a few minutes, rather than several hours. (Disher used healthier oils in his gumbo, knowing she’d be in the crowd.)

And there’s the North Vermilion Youth Athletic Association, which for years had struggled to make credit card sales in its concession stand using Cox internet.

“We had issues on top of issues,” said Josh Broussard, the nonprofit’s president.

Cajun Broadband offered the athletic association free hookups, Wi-Fi service and boosters in exchange for some publicity. Now, the park has strong enough service to fuel live scoreboards and stream games, Broussard said, which means that they can host regional tournaments.

Broussard, who played sports at the park as a child, said the change is much needed. 

“I saw what it was, and I just want to improve it,” Broussard said, “and make it better than what it was when we were there.”