Our History
Planet Networks was founded as Garden Networks in 1994 in Newton, New Jersey to provide Internet access and services to a small and under-served rural community from the garage of an old firehouse with only 3 modems. Over the ensuing years, Garden grew and changed. Due to our proximity to New York City, we were an early entrant into the NYC Internet access market.
We quickly found the name Garden Networks was a limiting factor in marketing due to the connection to the state of New Jersey (The Garden State) and the assumption by many customers that we only served New Jersey. We changed the company name to Tellurian Networks and continued our growth. We loved the name Tellurian since it had a double meaning 1. of or related to the earth and 2. human beings, but people always had a hard time spelling it. As part of this growth, we acquired over 14 smaller competitors including: RT Online, CSI Online, Shore Networks, Ingress, LSI, NJ Internet, and more. For one of our many acquisitions, we purchased our original inspiration for becoming an ISP back in 1994, Planet Access Networks. Since we loved the domain name Planet.Net and they were also the inspiration for the change to the more global name Tellurian, we changed our company name to Planet Networks. It is easier to spell and pronounce and Planet Networks brought us back to our roots and kept the message of a global scope for our network and services. Along the way, we sold off our medical software hosting business to Dell Perot Systems in 2008, but we continued to offer Internet, IT services, and software hosting.
Over the past 30 years, our company and the scope of our services have grown to serve a global market, but we still live by the same fundamental principles of honesty and integrity in all we do, excellence in all aspects of our services, and working smarter to provide tremendous value to our clients.
TIMELINE
1994
Founded with a 256k fractional T1 line and three 28.8k modems
1995
First in the world Internet service with Windows based DNS, Email, Web, and RADIUS all driven by a SQL database and TAS management application; Added additional POPs in Cliffside Park, NJ, Caldwell, NJ, Morristown, NJ, and New Brunswick, NJ; Deployed shared application hosting solutions for development teams, hosted Rutgers University's first Internet class, Pfizer project for web based Tikosyn prescribing and dispensing certification
1996
Deployed DSL services in multiple COs, added over 100 dialup POPs throughout the northeast; Deployed corporate intranet for Warner-Lambert; deployed early dedicated firewalls for clients to ensure Internet security
1997
Began offering high speed dedicated services throughout NY, NJ, and PA; Added 200+ additional dialup POPs
1998
Deployed wireless Internet access in multiple towns; Added nationwide DSL with Covad, NorthPoint, Sprint, and Verizon; Added 300+ additional dialup POPs. Aquired several other ISPs. Special ISP services for Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse IT A&P auditing divisions
1999
Opened purpose built datacenter with a focus on business application hosting and security in Newton, NJ; Aquired several other ISPs; new version of TAS which runs the entire business including provisioning, monitoring, ticketing, and billing
2000
Focused on hosting medical applications; Aquired several other ISPs; build new network and additional POPs
2001
Built nationwide backbone; grew manged server business; Hosted remote desktop offering rapidly growing
2002
Developed additional proprietary tools for monitoring and hosting automation; Doubled in size... again
2003
Purchased additional regional ISPs; Number of POPs exceeds 2000 throughout the United States
2004
Built Los Angeles, California datacenter; upgraded nationwide backbone to GigE speeds
2005
Built multiple redundant fiber routes to link Newton, NJ datacenter with New York City and Philadelphia networks
2006
Upgraded IP backbone to be multi-vendor with Foundry (now Brocade) and Cisco gear; SAS 70 Type II Audit completed
2007
Became largest medical hosting company in United States through partnerships with all leading software companies; Filled Los Angeles datacenter to capacity. Began development of Lenexa, Kansas datacenter; Added a new corporate HQ with the purchase of the historic Sussex County Hall Of Records and subsequent total restoration
2008
Sold medical hosting business line to Dell/Perot Systems; Increased application development practice
2009
Began expansion to additional geographic locations and focused on fiber backbone construction
2010
Developed aviation services practice; Moved certain infrastructure elements to Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure for scalability
2011
Built mobile application services practice; Added new industry specific solution portfolios
2012
Grew manufacturing and industrial services practice; moved internal operations to Office 365
2013
Developed educational services practice; began client Office 365 deployments
2014
Built additional network operations center to meet client demand
2015
Built new redundant fiber DWDM backbone; Corporate event staging, production, and live streaming services added to product portfolio; added managed and hosted VoIP telephony and collaboration service offerings
2016
Deployed gigabit wireless technology to clients; Began testing IP backbone upgrades to 100G; Renewed focus on client side managed wireless, LAN, and Internet solutions to ensure fast and reliable access to hosted applications. Implemented new management system for complete remote monitoring and management of client WLAN/LAN/WAN plus datacenters to desktops. Cloud management console for single pane of glass for all clients. Large scale roll-out of new hosted VoIP Enterprise platforms and carrier services.
2017
Deployed GPON for high speed fiber optic Internet access. Built multiple new DWDM fiber rings throughout our markets served. Doubled in size again.
2018
Built new cloud/virtualization platform for internal, customer, and partner cloud workloads. Our new platform provides instant backup, recovery, replication, and DR testing capabilities. Built out multiple new developments and multi-tenant complexes with fiber to the unit. Added features to our hosted VoIP platform. Doubled in size again.
2019
Moved our corporate HQ back into the historic Sussex County Hall of Records building which had been occupied by Dell/NTT after our sale of the medical hosting business to them in 2008. Became a certified wireless carrier in the state of CA. Became a CLEC in NJ. Aquired several other ISPs and services providers throughout the US. Closed an initial seed investment round. Doubled in size again.
2020
Began building out fiber to every address in many towns starting with Newton, NJ and Sparta, NJ. Expanded our cloud service offerings. Began collecting interest data from people who want a better Internet option. Gained approval to access the right of way in 30+ municipalities in New Jersey. Started offering hosted VoIP phone systems. Grew service area, staff, and revenue.
2021
Accelerated building out fiber to every address in many towns finishing Newton, NJ and making significant progress in Sparta, NJ. Expanded our fiber footprint to begin to provide service in Andover, Blairstown, Branchville, Butler, Byram, Denville, Frankford, Franklin, Fredon, Frelinghuysen, Hampton, Hardwick, Jefferson, Lafayette, Ledgewood, Montville, Newark, Newton, Parsippany, Sparta, Stillwater, and Weehawken.. Refined our data collection process to understand better where the people who want a faster Internet option are located so we can prioritize those areas. Gained approval to access the right of way in 25+ additional municipalities in New Jersey. Closed a second seed investment round. Added 20+ vehicles to the fleet. Grew service area, staff, and revenue.
2022
We started building underground neighborhoods in Newton, NJ, and Fredon, NJ, to complete areas previously passed with fiber but not built. Created new modular stand-alone (Points of Presence) POPs to deploy better infrastructure in new areas; built fiber service in Green, Hope, Wantage, Sussex, and Knowlton. Approached close to complete coverage in many areas started in 2021. Added 30+ vehicles to the fleet. Grew serviceable area, staff, and revenue each by over 100%.
2023
We grew to over 130 employees. Acquired Fiberlinc in Saugerties, NY, and Stroud Media in Stroudsburg, PA. Exceeded 35,000 poles permitted. Our fiber network grew to over 1000 miles installed. Started fiber footprint expansion to the west, north, and south into Stroudsburg, PA; East Stroudsburg, PA; Saugerties, NY. We expanded fiber coverage within our contiguous northwestern NJ area, including Allamuchy, Byram, and Jefferson; Expanded underground fiber areas within Fredon, Sparta, Andover, Hardwick, Hampton, and Green; Purchased many additional vehicles and construction equipment.
2024
We expanded coverage in Saugerties, Vernon, Frankford, Wantage, Sussex, Stroudsburg, Byram, Sparta, and more. Fiber network doubled to over 2,000 miles. We upgraded our network backbone to 400G. We now have 180+ employees and 120 vehicles building fiber every day.