Certain Lake Charles residents and businesses now have another option for accessing the internet. AOP Fiber Internet is here. This family-owned and operated business has been operating in the Lake Area since 1990 and announced the news at L’Auberge Casino Resort Wednesday, July 20.

“We thank you for this investment,” said Mayor Nic Hunter at the ribbon cutting ceremony.  “We need options in Lake Charles and you’re providing some much-needed options.”

AOP chose the location for the ribbon cutting ceremony because the casino is one of the first buildings in the city to have AOP dedicated 10 gig internet connection with public wifi.

AOP Speeds start at 500 mbps and go up to 20 gigs. AOP is a Tier 1 internet service provider (ISP), just like AT&T or Suddenlink, according to Brian Bernhardt, AOP.

Fiber optic internet is the fastest and most reliable form of internet connection with faster speeds and dependability generally not provided by cable. Plus, underground fiber means a weather-proof fiber network.

“This has truly been a team effort,” said Brandon Greene, president of AOP, “and when I say our people pushed the limits to get things accomplished, they pushed the limit.”

Greene did the math. From the time the company broke ground to the time it turned on the first customer was under 200 days.

“In this industry, that’s unheard of,” he said.

AOP upload speeds (how quickly you can share something on the internet like a selfie via social media, for instance), will equal download speeds, according to Bernhardt. That’s the speed of how quickly the user can access something such as a movie streaming service.

AOP was the first company in the area to install color copiers.

“We watched the evolution of technology,” Greene said. “We started making these big bulky printer cables that we ran across people’s work areas just to be able to print. And I’m sure you’ve observed that anytime you sit down at someone’s computer and you fix a problem, you’re immediately listed as an IT expert.”

AOP saw the need for that service.

“We invested in moving two Microsoft engineers here from the West Coast and started an IT division,” Greene said.

When cloud infrastructure became available local companies saw the benefits but worried that it might be too expensive, hard to implement and didn’t really understand what it was, AOP hired a team of Linux engineers and built a cloud environment from the ground up.

“Inc. put us on their list for the nation’s fastest growing companies,” Greene said.

“The network we built to run this cloud infrastructure performed ideally during hurricanes, storms and floods. It was placed in multiple data centers in New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Baton Rouge and stayed up 100 percent,” according to Greene.

“It ran phenomenally, did everything it was supposed to do, plus some. That was easily said, but not as easily accomplished,” Greene said. “Again, I have to say it was because of the team.”

That’s when they decided they should make a fiber optic network available. Students were working at home. Employees were working remotely.

“A few months later, we became a public utility company,” Greene said. “That gave us access to land on the side of the roadways and the ability to install our own infrastructure.”

Greene said AOP wants to push the limits of fiber optics.

“It’s 2022,” he said. “Nobody should have 100 mbps anymore.”