Full article from BISNOW: Oilfield Workers Can Hear You Now

Houston, TX, March 25, 2011 — Texas Energy Network, LLC (TEN) announced today that it had finalized an initial line of credit facility with Amegy Bank of Texas, one of the fastest growing banks in Texas.

“Amegy Bank is excited to play a role in helping Texas Energy Network, LLC build their business and is looking forward to being a part of their future ventures,” said Amegy Bank Private Banker Melissa Dabbs. “Our partnership with TEN demonstrates our commitment to helping local businesses expand and drive the Texas economy,” added Amegy Bank Corporate Banker Kelly Nash.

TEN’s Chief Executive Officer, Gregory M. Casey remarked, “ Amegy is the kind of smart financial partner that will help us achieve our goal of blanketing the oilfields of Texas and the world with mission critical bandwidth. It’s to their credit that they recognized the power of what we are doing and stepped forward to supply us with capital. We look forward to expanding our relationship with Amegy as we rollout the TEN network for the Oil and Gas industry”

With assets of approximately $11 billion, local decision making and a history of relationship banking, Amegy has the resources to serve leading Texas companies as a source of capital as well as provide efficient and effective treasury management, international and investment services. The Bank, with more than 71 locations in Houston, seven in Dallas and five in San Antonio, specializes in commercial banking as well as private financial management and trust services for families and individuals, and retail and mortgage banking services. Amegy is a part of the Zions Bancorporation (NASDAQ: ZION) collection of great banks.

By blanketing the oil and gas fields of the world with bandwidth, Texas Energy Network, LLC is being positioned to become the dominant provider of Fourth Generation broadband products and services to the Oil and Gas industry.

Texas Energy Network has gone live with its first 4G tower site in the Andrews County, Texas, the first of many TEN expects to build as it expands its wireless communications network dedicated to the oil and gas industry. At first blush, you might wonder why. Isn’t the wireless space, including mobile broadband, rather well supplied? Well, yes and no. Lots of rural areas–including many aeras where energy companies operate–are in fact not well supplied with fast broadband of any sort, wireless or fixed.

That’s a bit of a historical legacy: mobile service up until recently was a service used by people who needed to communicate with other people. Only recently has the notion of machine-to-machine communications arisen as a key growth area for mobile service providers.

“The oil field is a barren place, quite remote,” says Greg Casey, Texas Energy Network CEO. There are lots of sensors in operation, and until now, most have been narrowband devices, using a variety of different networks for transport. TEN plans to use leased 4G spectrum to create a single wireless backhaul supporting all requirements of the telemetry, seismic data, pressure data that energy firms typically have to manage.

The advantages, aside from simplicity, include lots more bandwidth. Traditionally, energy company sensor networks have been forced to use networks supporting kilobytes, and now will have access to megabytes. Typically, that leads to creation of new apps, and oil service applications should not prove to be an exception to the rule.

In part, TEN is an outsourcing play. In the past, energy companies, like many other enterprises, have built their own networks. TEN proposes to offload those chores, provide enhanced utility, and cut costs. You might wonder how TEN sources its 4G spectrum. As it turns out, there typically is a third player, even in markets lead by AT&T or Verizon Wireless. Quite often, that spectrum is not yet in commercial use, or there is spare capacity (rural areas are less dense, and therefore have less loading of any available network, compared to urban networks).

For the most part, though, “we are going places where AT&T and Verizon do not go,” says Casey. “We are off the beaten path, in the desert and so forth.

“TEN Office” provides a wireless broadband solution with service level agreements of a minimum of 1Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth.

“TEN SCADA” and “SCADA Plus” are designed for the collection of remote telemetry from the field. They are engineered and priced to be deployed in large numbers in remote areas lacking wireline, cellular or electricity. This turnkey communications solution provides an Ethernet and/or RS232 handoff and is designed for low bandwidth applications.

“TEN Alarm” offers the highest-possible SLAs regarding packet priority and guaranteed bit rate for alarm data, and is offered in a fully-redundant configuration.

“TEN Secure” provides secure, remote monitoring capabilities of field assets that may be prone to trespass, theft, vandalism or require validated entry and remote logging of site access.

“TEN Mobile” is designed to support the communication needs of mobile remote field personnel and provides mobile wireless broadband services that turn any vehicle into a mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot.

Andrews County, Texas (PRWEB) February 28, 2011

Texas Energy Network, LLC, (“TEN”) announced today that it has gone live with its first 4G cell site in the Andrews County, Texas. This first cell is one of many to come as TEN deploys its network dedicated to meeting the needs of the oil and gas industry. The company plans to complete its rollout in the Permian basin by year end. Gregory M. Casey, Chief Executive Officer of TEN remarked, “We have but one goal; to blanket every major oilfield, starting with the Permian Basin, with broadband. This is a huge first step of many towards that goal.”
Michael Jones, President and Chief Operating Officer added, “this is a major milestone for us as we build the TEN network. We appreciate the immense enthusiasm that our customers and vendors have shown for our plans.” The company is to begin testing with customers this week.

The Permian Basin, one of the largest oil fields in the world, is located in West Texas and the adjoining area of southeastern New Mexico. The Permian Basin Oil Field covers an area approximately 250 miles wide and 300 miles long and includes Andrews County, Texas. Andrews is one of the top two leading oil producing counties in the Permian Basin.
By blanketing the oil and gas fields of the world with bandwidth, Texas Energy Network, LLC is being positioned to become the dominant provider of Fourth Generation broadband products and services to the Oil and Gas industry.
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Edited Excerpt from the Houston Business Journal – by Barrett Goldsmith , Reporter
Date: Friday, February 4, 2011, 5:00am CST

In early 2009, Greg Casey was sitting in a trailer near an oil rig on the dusty plains of Odessa, gazing out the window. The telecommunications industry veteran was surprised by what he saw: multiple video screens, telephone setups and radio devices, all operating on different communication channels.

“I thought to myself, ‘All this could run on an (Internet protocol) network,’” Casey said. “I decided that I wanted to blanket the oil fields with bandwidth and shorten the distance between the oil field and the office.”

Casey wasted little time putting his plan into action, and, by March 2009, he had started his own company, Texas Energy Network LLC, in an attempt to provide large bandwidth “4G” network coverage to oil and gas drilling sites.
In February, Houston-based Texas Energy Network is expected to go live with oilfield communications for several “big names,” according to Casey. Although he declined to name them directly, at a meeting of an American Petroleum Institute subcommittee on telecommunications in November, Casey addressed representatives from a who’s who in the industry, including ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Kinder Morgan Inc. and Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Casey’s initiative is part of a big push expected to play out in the next few years to provide high-speed communications to energy players that are pushing farther into remote or rugged areas to develop shale plays and other assets.

CRUCIAL FUNCTION

The aim of Texas Energy Network and companies like it is to replace the dominant channel of oilfield and gas-play communications — satellite — with what’s known as a long-term evolution concept, or LTE.

Casey said LTE is less costly and faster than satellite, capable of delivering up to 10 megabytes of data per second, compared with an industry standard of 512 kilobytes per second.

Such a system is tough to price, Casey said, but a ballpark estimate would be about $1,000 a month for a two-megabyte-per-second setup for a full drilling site, or about $25 per month to equip an individual pump jack or a supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, device.

According to a report by San Antonio-based consultants Frost & Sullivan Inc., total SCADA spending, which also includes power and other utilities, was about $4.6 billion in 2009 and is projected to reach $7 billion by 2016.

It is the transfer to and from SCADA devices, said Mike Guillotte, a 45-year exploration and production industry communications veteran, that is perhaps the most crucial function of an oilfield network.

“Sometimes it’s just data acquisition where we want to know what’s happening,” Guillotte said. “Then there are supervisory functions, such as adjusting the pressure or closing a valve. Obviously those are critical, but SCADA also includes electrical grids, water and sewage systems and natural gas distribution. So you can see why it’s so important to stay connected.”

Guillotte, who recently retired from Fort Worth-based XTO Energy Inc., has seen oilfield communications evolve from telephone lines to radio frequencies to satellite and cellular networks. Through it all, energy companies have been loathe to relinquish control of their systems, and that attitude must change, he said.

“That’s just the oilfield attitude — we want to do it ourselves,” Guillotte said. “Most companies want complete control of their SCADA systems, and the reluctance to rely on third parties needs to be addressed.”

Jeffrey Redding, who worked with oil and gas industry customers in New Mexico with Gilbert, S.C.-based phone company BPT Communications Inc. (now Comporium Communications), said companies that can surmount the remote-location challenges will gain a major leg up.

“Communications need to be mobile to be deployed in remote and difficult-to-access locations,” Redding said.

“The worst issues — network failures and system failures — never seem to happen during the business day. They happen at midnight on Saturday or on a Sunday morning.”

bgoldsmith@bizjournals.com • 713-395-9627

Houston, TX (PRWEB) January 12, 2011

Texas Energy Network, LLC (TEN) announced today that it had filed applications for patents for a number of proprietary oilfield communications devices developed pursuant to it’s previously announced plans to provide bandwidth to the energy industry. These devices will be tested in conjunction with LTE in a live oilfield environment in Andrews County Texas beginning in February.

Michael Jones, Chief Operating Officer of TEN noted “Today’s announcement is the culmination of many months of research and development by the TEN team. These devices provide critical access for the customers onfield oil and gas systems to the 4G Texas Energy Network and will be the mainstay of TEN services such as TENspot and TEN Explore. ”

By blanketing the oil and gas fields of the world with bandwidth, Texas Energy Network, LLC is being developed to become the dominant provider of Fourth Generation broadband products and services to the Oil and Gas industry.
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Houston, TX (PRWEB) October 18, 2010

Texas Energy Network, LLC’s (TEN’s) Chief Executive Office, Gregory M. Casey has been invited to speak before the American Petroleum Institutes’ Telecommunications Subcommittee in Houston Texas on November 10, 2010. Casey will discuss TEN’s plans to deploy a revolutionary 4G network specifically for the Oil and Gas industry.

Mr. Casey remarked “I am honored and pleased that I have been invited to talk to this important organization. These companies represent a huge portion of this nation’s economy and TEN intends to give them the bandwidth that is vital to their mission critical infrastructure. Our discussions with these companies have shown a high level of interest with what we will be offering in the very near future.”

The American Petroleum Institute(API)’s Telecommunications Subcommittee supports the oil and natural gas industry’s management and implementation of telecommunications technologies and resources. Among other things, it represents API before the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) on important regulatory developments affecting telecommunications in the oil and gas industry. The Telecommunications Subcommittee meets twice each year. The committee consists of communications directors and managers from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Kinder Morgan, Occidental, TransCanada.

Texas Energy Network, LLC was formed to provided bandwidth to the oil and gas industry. Partnering with technology giant Alcatel-Lucent, TEN will be the first to deploy LTE wireless technology that will blanket the oil and gas fields. TEN’s service will provide the highest level of bandwidth possible for the industry’s mission critical monitoring, SCADA, surveillance and mobile needs.

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Houston, TX (PRWEB) August 17, 2010

Texas Energy Network (“TEN”) annnounced today that it will be the first communications company to deploy 4G technology to benefit Oil and Gas companies growing data requirements. TEN will hold a major demonstration in New Mexico in conjunction with Alcatel-Lucent.

The demonstration will mark the beginning of TEN’s plans to deploy LTE technology to oil and gas fields across America and eventually the world. Gregory Casey, Chief Executive Officer of TEN said “Thanks to the hard work of the TEN team and our partners, we are taking the first important step to providing data communications to the Energy industry at a huge savings and greater efficiency over what they have today. If we have our way, our actions will usher in a new era of increased communications performance, leveraging industry standards and technology to deliver lower costs. TEN has the unique advantage of a game changing technology and an aggressive customer oriented business plan.”

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless broadband technology developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an industry trade group.3GPP engineers named the technology “Long Term Evolution” because it represents the next step (4G) in a progression from GSM, a 2G standard, to UMTS, the 3G technologies based upon GSM. LTE provides significantly increased peak data rates, with the potential for 100 Mbps downstream and 30 Mbps upstream, reduced latency, scalable bandwidth capacity, and enhanced security. LTE offers significant advantages over WiMAX and other presently used technologies.
TEN plans to use LTE as the core technology behind a national wireless broadband network dedicated to and designed around the needs of remote critical infrastructure companies, initially the oil and gas industry.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide all the wireless technology for the end-to-end LTE network using its LTE on Wheels truck. The demo will show a live LTE network with working data devices such as laptops with 1 Mbps data uplink speeds. Using this technology, the network could be connected directly to an oil site sensor or linked to a monitoring camera on a pipeline sending back live video images.

Stanley Hughey, Chief Technology Officer of TEN said “TEN‘s goal is to provide a single, carrier grade, end-to-end, IP only service that will transit data from remote field locations. The ability to deliver data at greater bandwidths with less latency will drive next generation applications and will, without a doubt, improve security, visibility and productivity in virtually every remote process.”

TEN will release a portfolio of products geared to address specific field applications such as SCADA data collection and control, remote field and mobile office services, critical alarm and security monitoring. Specific applications will include voice, video, file and data transfer, VPN, and Internet access.

Ken Wirth, President, LTE Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent said, “Working with innovative providers like TEN helps to demonstrate the power and promise of LTE technology to support data intensive applications in the energy industry. The power of having critical, abundant and timely information from the field – no matter how remote – delivers a new ability to continuously monitor and manage the entire operation more efficiently.”

In addition, TEN will deploy CICI (Critical Infrastructure Control Interface). This interface will offer a portal to TEN customers allowing them to monitor, set and control the policies associated with every end-point device they have deployed on the TEN network. Mr. Hughey explained, “Starting at a global level, customers will be able to drill down and assign bandwidth, bit rates and priority to each individual device or group of devices on the TEN network. This powerful offering will provide the highest level of visibility and control over assets in the field. TEN is committed to removing the distance between the remote device and its operator.”

This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities in TEXAS ENERGY NETWORK LLC, and may not be relied upon in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.

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Houston TX (PRWEB) March 11, 2010

The Texas Energy Network, LLC (“TEN”) filed today with the Texas Department of Public Service for certification as an interexchange carrier. TEN was formed to provide enhanced communication services to the oil and gas industry that would usher exploration companies in to the “Digital Oilfield” era. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Gregory M. Casey said “This is just one of many first steps for this new company. We intend to provide services to the energy industry that will allow them to operate more efficiently and effectively through advanced communication technology”. The Company intends to take advantage of low cost “next gen” technologies that will allow, for example, exploration companies to upload onsite seismic data to the office.

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