Wind River Internet provides update on services amid COVID-19

Wind River Internet’s (WRI) Riverton office (1100 West Main St.) will remain closed to the public until further notice but they are all working and will do appointments if needed.

Now that everyone is stuck at home the usage has gone up 3X higher than normal. WRI immediately did upgrades to equipment to handle it and to keep high-speed Internet flowing to Fremont County.

Almost all of the School Districts in the County have called asking how they could get good Internet to students at their homes. This prompted WRI to set up free public hotspots at Great Plains Hall, Blue Sky Hall, Wyoming Indian High School, and the WRI Riverton office parking lots.

The fiber construction is starting back up for Ethete and soon Fort Washakie, which is very exciting news! The virus has not slowed them down. WRI has over 100 installs being done in the next two weeks and they are running around like crazy!  They have also developed a way to do installs without contact or going inside the home if requested. With the advice of Makerspace 307, Wind River Internet started making their own 3D printed face masks and shields.

Now that they have a good supply of masks and face shields, they are ready to start giving them away to other essential workers that have to work with the public.

The criteria for the free mask is to call 307-857-2004, ask for a mask and they will set up a pickup time at the Main Street office.

For anyone else that wants a mask, they are $2 and we recommend you donate at least another $2 for supplies to make more masks for the essential workers. Face shields are $5. Both can be made in almost any color you can think of:

These masks are the next best thing to an N95 and they are part of the https://www.makethemasks.com/ project.

There are 100 masks ready to go right now on a first come first serve basis.

For more information, call the office at 307-857-2004 or visit the website.