Blog Archives - Golden Belt / GBT Communications

One thing that is costing Americans billions each year…

There’s a good chance you spend a considerable amount of time each day checking, reading, and responding to emails. It’s obvious why email is so popular because of the convenience to communicate in a very quick and timely manner, plus the ease of sharing information across the world with each other. With any type of high-demand product or service, criminals exploit and target these services. In 2019, it was estimated 3.4 Billion fake emails, such as phishing or malicious emails, were sent each day, and that number continues to rise. These fake and malicious emails cost Americans $Billions each year, so it is important to educate yourself and understand what to look for so you are not the next victim. Below are some of the most common scam emails to look out for. Emails that ask you to reset a password or confirm personal or payment Information. Even if the email seems legit or from a person or company that you do business with, you should not click on links to reset passwords or update portal information unless you’ve initiated the request. If you think it might be legit, go to the official website to reset the password or update your information, or try to call the official phone number of the organization requesting the information. If you are not expecting the email, you should never open any attachments or click on any links. Malicious emails embed ransomware or viruses into links and attachments within the email. Typically opening an email will not harm your device, but once you click the link or attachment, that’s when it’s possible for your device and data to be exposed or locked until you pay a ransom. Do not click on links or open attachments if you are not expecting them or did not request them. The email message creates a sense of urgency or curiosity. A notification that a charge was made on your credit or bank account or a purchase didn’t go through, a special offering if you click on the link within 30 minutes, or news about a change in a work policy...

Phone Backups – How important are they really?

Cell Phones, Tech Tips

Imagine coming home from a long day in the field and reaching in your pocket for your phone and realizing it’s not there. As you reflect on your day, you recall setting it on top of the swather while working on the equipment. Now your phone is lost! You go to your local GBT store to get a new phone, and you are told because your phone was not backed up, they are unable to recover any of your information, including contacts, pictures, notes and apps. You are now officially starting over on your new phone. How can this be prevented? Backing up your phone protects your data if you lose your phone, it’s stolen, or it no longer functions. And when the time comes to replace your phone, a backup allows you to easily restore your data to the new device. Plus, backing up your phone helps you organize your data so it’s easier to access. You can lose your phone data accidentally and unexpectedly due to many reasons. It is always better to be cautious in such situations, rather than regretting it later. Backing up your Android, iPhone, or any other phone regularly in more than one place is very important! It will keep you relaxed, knowing all your photos, important files, and contacts are safe, and you can quickly and easily restore them anytime. The price you pay for losing all your valuable data will be much higher than the cost of the option you select to back them up. If you need help ensuring your data is being backed up, stop by any GBT store location, and we can check your settings and make sure your data is protected!

Fiber Internet for Rural Pawnee & Stafford Counties

Mar 7, 2023

Governor Kelly recently announced that GBT was awarded a $6,782,694 grant from the State of Kansas through the Kansas Capital Project Funds Broadband Infrastructure Program. This grant will be used by GBT to provide Fiber Internet, Voice, & TV services to...

Giving & Gratitude

Nov 8, 2022

The month of November tends to make people take a moment and recognize what they are thankful for and at GBT we are no different. The picture above highlights the individuals that form the GBT team and without each and everyone we could not provide the high level of...

2 Important things you can do right now to prep your home for holiday house guests

Nov 1, 2022

Is your house going to be busting at the seams with family coming home for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Doing these 2 things before guests come will save you headaches so you can focus on food, fun, and family! 1. Make your Wifi network and password info easy to find....

Co-ops build Economic Power

Community

October is National Cooperative Month, and this year’s theme “Co-ops Build Economic Power,” is lived out every day by GBT! When GBT began in 1953, a group of individuals came together to form a Cooperative with Member-Owners to fill the unmet need of providing quality telecommunications in the rural, sparsely populated areas of Kansas. GBT, along with other Cooperatives formed in the early years, including those generating and providing electricity and those providing elevators to receive and transport farmers’ crops to market, improved the standard of living for area residents and stimulated the economy in rural Kansas! Fast forward nearly 70 years, and GBT is one of 36 Rural Telephone Cooperatives that together cover nearly half the state of Kansas, serving our customers with Voice, Video, Cellular, Home Security, Computer Repair, IT Services, and the Game Changer—High-Speed Broadband! Over 95% of GBT’s telephone exchange customers are connected to FIBER BROADBAND, with plans to reach 100% by 2023. USDA deems 100 Mbps download x 20 Mbps upload as “sufficient broadband access”, and GBT FIBER has the speed capability of more than 100x this speed! Plus, think for a moment how you can use the Internet—work from home, financial and credit card transactions, agriculture monitoring, email, research, student education, telehealth visits with doctors, electronic medical records, cloud-based servers, streaming video…the list goes on and on. Cooperatives make decisions locally, and GBT is led by a Board of Directors elected by the Member-Owners at our Annual Meeting, representing the 7 Districts of the GBT area: James Jecha, Timken; Clyde Sutton, Ness City; Cinda Flax, Utica; Philip Martin, Ellis; Gene Knieling, Rush Center; Brian Hammeke, Rozel; and Ron Gruber, Lewis. When the cooperative is successful and profitable, allocations are made to Member-Owners in the form of capital credits. Total Capital Credit Retirements over the last 5 years...

Internship thoughts… Isabelle Cannata’s recap on her Internship with GBT Marketing

Team Blue

[elfsight_social_share_buttons id="2"]INTERNSHIP THOUGHTS...By: Isabelle Cannata, GBT Marketing InternAs graduation is approaching and I will soon be thrust into the terrifying real world, I can only be grateful that I was allowed a taste of the future through my internship at GBT. I am a Fort Hays State University senior, nearing the completion of my Bachelor of Art in Communication Studies, with an emphasis in Public Relations/ Advertising and a minor in Marketing (quite the mouthful, am I right?). I like to consider myself to be a well-rounded individual, which is a fancy way of saying that before choosing these areas of study, I switched between every different degree available in the state of Kansas. Though this was stressful at the time, it allowed me to expand my abilities in areas such as art and journalism, which I have used quite frequently during my internship! In my three years of studying communications and marketing strategies specifically, I crammed a lot of information into my brain. Though I can write a mean marketing plan and read through scholarly articles in a breeze, none of my education actually prepared me for what the workforce entails. I had no idea what the day-to-day operations of a marketer or public relations professional looked like other than the many case analysis homework assignments that I read. Graphic Design By: Isabelle Cannata, GBT Marketing Intern[wdcl_image_carousel_child photo="https://gbt.flywheelstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/272623357_5033498983361034_7059780358549239277_n.jpg" _builder_version="4.17.3" _module_preset="default"...

2022 GBT Annual Meeting

Community

[elfsight_social_share_buttons id="2"]April 2022 | 5 MIN READEMBRACING TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS QUALITY OF LIFE?95%GBT members who have speeds up to 1 Gig! $3.85 MDollars GBT has invested to bring Fiber to our members. $1.7 MDollars in capital credits that were retired $1.7 MDollars GBT donated back to our communities to improve lives and promote the local economy. As we look back at 2021, it will go down as a transformational year for the Cooperative and industry. The importance of broadband was brought on by the onset of COVID as many across the country were working, educating, shopping, and participating in wellness from home. The demand for Internet and usage of the GBT network was the highest the Cooperative had witnessed to date, and it generated many conversations about universal broadband and the billons of Federal dollars earmarked to address unserved and underserved areas across the country. Where is GBT in comparison to the rest of providers around the country? We are all exposed to the advertising of the national providers across some medium, so we hear about fast speeds, 5G, fiber, etc. The truth of the matter is, GBT is very different from those national providers focused on providing a return to their shareholders and with whom they have little to no idea of who their customers are. GBT is focused on our mission of providing the best user experience to our customers through reliable state-of-the-art communications services. Our customers are our neighbors, friends, and members who live and play in the same communities we serve and love! Our network is connecting 95% of the members by state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure that allows them to have speeds up to 1 GIG upload and download. While big, out-of-state broadband providers are making a big deal about starting to bring fiber to rural communities, GBT first brought fiber to our members in the late 1990’s and connected the first community to fiber-to-the-home in 2008! Today GBT...

Fiber is the name of the game

Community, Internet

[elfsight_social_share_buttons id="2"] APRIL 2022 | 2 MIN READ FIBER IS THE NAME OF THE GAME. As GBT continues to provide the best Internet and Communication services to residents and businesses in our area, GBT is very excited to announce the expansion of Fiber services in 2022 to the communities of St. John and Larned, as well as bringing Fiber to the rural customers in the Garfield, Burdett, and Bison exchanges. The 2022 rural exchange Fiber builds will begin in Garfield this summer, followed by Burdett, and finishing in Bison. St. John - Bringing an even BETTER user experience. GBT has been providing communication services to the community of St. John since 2008. GBT General Manager Beau Rebel stated, “With the continued growth and support GBT has seen in the community and the need for even faster Internet services than what we provide today, it was an easy decision to invest and upgrade our current infrastructure to a fully Fiber network within the entire city limits of St. John. We hope the community is excited to have access to Fiber services and understands the positive economic impacts Fiber can have with this upgrade.” GBT plans to start converting St. John customers to Fiber in the Summer of 2022. “It was an easy decision to invest and upgrade our current infrastructure to a fully Fiber network within the entire city limits of St. John. We hope the community is excited to have access to Fiber services and understands the positive economic impacts Fiber can have with this upgrade.” Larned - Filling a Fiber need. In Larned, GBT brought Fiber communication services to many of the businesses in 2018. The businesses that switched to GBT’s Fiber services have consistently voiced praise about GBT’s reliability, price, and the level of customer service they have received compared to what they had experienced from their previous communication provider. GBT General Manager commented, “As business customers have become familiar to GBT’s service, now the...

A Continuous Commitment to our Communities | GBT 2021 Year in Recap

Community

As we start a new year, I would like to take a moment to say THANK YOU to our many customers and update you on a few company happenings. GBT’s Fiber Network continues to grow, with homes and businesses getting blazing fast Internet connections that only fiber can deliver! Many rural areas lack fiber because it isn’t financially viable for big Internet companies to provide service due to lack of population density. The GBT Cooperative has invested over $40 million in the last 13 years to bring 94% of our members a ROBUST Fiber Connection! 2021’s focus included the rural areas of Brownell, Bazine, and McCracken—meaning these areas, along with current fiber-connected members, will have access to Gigabit Internet connections and the best experience available in the area! The GBT Cooperative has three more exchanges--Bison, Burdett, and Garfield—planned to receive fiber connections in 2022. I am sure many of you unwrapped an Internet-connected device this holiday season that depends on a robust Internet connection to deliver the desired performance. The GBT Cooperative understands the broadband needs of our members are evolving--upgrading to 100% Fiber Optic Network throughout our area has been part of our long-term commitment and strategy that should wrap up in the next three years! Getting expert, local IT help is easy with GBT Business Technology Solutions. GBT has increased its offering of Business IT Solutions recently because of demand from our customers. As technology evolves and society becomes more dependent on the Internet for commerce, attacks have become increasingly more common. Often hackers target small business because of the lack of security infrastructure to protect against these threats. Whether a business is large or small, when IT issues arise, productivity can come to a standstill. Our team is close, accessible, and ready to help keep your business running. Call us, and we will customize a package to meet your individual needs! In addition to...

Is all Internet created the same?

Internet, Tech Tips

[elfsight_social_share_buttons id="2"]JANUARY 2022 | 3 MIN READIS ALL INTERNET CREATED THE SAME?Do you know what type of technology GBT or your current Broadband provider uses to provide Internet to your home or business? Did you know there are about 6 different ways to provide Internet, and the type of technology used will greatly affect the capabilities and user experience your household can come to expect? GBT provides Internet to our customers via 4 methods. Read on as we briefly explain each of their capabilities and limitations. I'm an Image Caption ready-to-use.Photograph by Lorem Ipsum via Unsplash Internet provided via Fiber Optics Fiber optics today is the best type of technology to provide Internet service. Fiber is a buzzword for those that do not have it but also the most expensive way to provide service. Fiber is the best because it can deliver very fast synchronous download and upload speeds and is the most reliable. At GBT, we can provide up to 1000Mbps download by 1000Mbps upload to almost 95% of our Cooperative territory, including the rural areas. Fiber is also the best when it comes to latency, which is the time it takes to send information. When it comes to latency, the lower the number the better, and typically fiber can produce latency at 17 milliseconds (ms) or quicker. Fiber is typically a dedicated connection to every home or business and does not have its bandwidth shared between other subscribers within a service group. Internet provided via Coax or Coaxial Cable Coax cable, which at one time was mainly used to provide cable TV service, is a second way to provide Internet. Like fiber, coax connects to your house utilizing a physical cable that transports Internet from GBT’s facilities to each individual home. Like fiber, coax can provide fast download speeds up to 250Mbps on a GBT Internet connection, but it is somewhat limited on the upload speed to 25Mbps, and latency usually is the 50-60 millisecond range....