With the exception of its construction crews, all of its approximately 130 workers are full-time employees, who live in the area. The company recently moved into a new 20,000-square-foot headquarters office building in The Woodlands, and holds 45,000 square feet of warehouse space in the area.

The side of a Tachus van with their logo.

A Tachus representative is set up under a tent enrolling subscribers in the new internet service available in northeast Harris County and Montgomery County.

Frustrated with dealing with internet service providers owned by big corporations that jacked up their rates without providing any upgrades in service, Houston-area entrepreneur Hal Brumfield decided to start his own high-speed cable internet company.

Along with fellow entrepreneur Carter Old, Brumfield founded Tachus in 2018. Based in The Woodlands, Tachus currently boasts an approximately 700-mile fiber network and serves about 13,000 customers in Montgomery and northeastern Harris counties. Brumfield serves as CEO and Old as president and CFO of the young company.

Since its founding, the company has seen rapid growth, completing its first customer installation in the Montgomery County community of Bentwater in August 2019. From there, its customer base has expanded rapidly and Tachus celebrated bringing its 10,000th customer online a little more than a year later, in September 2021.

“We’ve been providing service in Kingwood for over a year. We came on line in October 2020,” Brumfield said. The Tachus network, which is about 95 percent built out in Kingwood, recently began expanding into the Atascocita area.

The company hopes to begin providing service to its first Atascocita customers within the next three to four months and plans to complete the build-out of its cable system in Atascocita by the end of 2022, he said.

Tachus offers three levels of service to its customers: the basic plan, which provides internet service at a speed of 100 megabytes per second, starts at $65 per month; the next level, with speed of 500 Mbps, at $80 per month; and the highest level at 1,000 Mbps at $90 per month. Brumfield said that unlike some of its competitors, Tachus offers a lifetime price, with no hidden fees and no contracts required.

“What you see is what you get. Our focus is on customer service,” he said.

Many Tachus customers have switched from other internet providers out of frustration over slow connection speeds, Brumfield said. Other customers have complained about their former internet providers’ “bait and switch” billing practices in which the customer is quoted a base price, only to see the cost go up considerably when the bill comes due, as a result of hidden taxes and fees.

Still other customers say that they jettisoned their former service because of its poor customer service practices, especially when the customer called the company with a problem. “They get stuck in automated hell, where they can’t get a person on the phone,” Brumfield said.

Tachus, on the other hand, prides itself on being a locally owned company, dedicated to serving its customers in the greater Houston area. With the exception of its construction crews, all of its approximately 130 workers are full-time employees, who live in the area. The company recently moved into a new 20,000-square-foot headquarters office building in The Woodlands, and holds 45,000 square feet of warehouse space in the area.

In addition, Tachus plans to invest about $50 million in the Kingwood and Atascocita areas this year, Brumfield said.

The Tachus network is currently available to about 50,000 homes. When the company lays its cable in a neighborhood, it has to ensure that every home in that neighborhood can be hooked up to the network, regardless of how many actual customers have signed up for the service.

During the initial construction process, crews use a boring technique to lay the fiber-optic cable along the utility easement, with a minimum of disruption to yards and property. After a potential customer signs up for the service, Tachus will extend the cable from the right-of-way, usually near a street or roadway, to the exterior of the new customer’s home.

On installation day, the company will install the Tachus fiber internet gateway, enabling wired connectivity to all devices throughout the customer’s house.

Unlike some competing services, which offer to bundle cable TV and phone services with internet, Tachus is an internet-only provider. However, on its website, Tachus says that its fast and reliable internet connection allows customers to stream local TV through popular streaming services using a smart TV or a streaming device such as an Amazon Fire TV Stick or Apple TV, “typically at a fraction of the cost of your current cable package.”

Brumfield hinted the company might be working to offer services other than internet connectivity in the future. “There could be more to come at a later date,” he said.

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