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Our small business blog series, Connected by GFiber, continues! This time we’re featuring Peter Ghali, owner of CrossFit Coordinate in Cary, North Carolina, who shares how GFiber’s high-speed reliable internet solved his connectivity challenges, keeping his community connected and allowing him to truly provide a seamless experience for his members.

When I purchased CrossFit Coordinate in 2021, I faced a problem: GFiber wasn't available at our location. I had acquired more than a gym. I'd bought a 24/7 fitness community in Cary, North Carolina, where every door lock, workout display, body composition scan, and playlist depended on reliable connectivity. As a tech-savvy entrepreneur, I knew exactly what I needed: fast and reliable fiber built for the future. But I couldn't get it initially. This is the story of how CrossFit Coordinate evolved, and how GFiber high-speed internet powers everything we do today.

At CrossFit Coordinate, our motto is "where community and fitness intersect." We serve primarily adults in their 30s and 40s, but members range from 12 to 77! These are people who care about their fitness and value being part of something bigger than themselves. We’re not talking about 23-year-old college athletes in peak condition; it’s 45-year-old soccer moms with two kids, professionals hitting 50, and everyone in between.

The social aspect is crucial because when your friends are coming to class, it encourages you to show up too. We've built a community of members creating an environment where nobody feels different or out of place.

The Internet Infrastructure Challenge
Here's what you may not have considered about modern fitness facilities: internet connectivity underlies almost everything we do. We offer 24/7 access, which means members can come in whenever they want, but those doors only unlock when our internet-connected system is working. We stream music during every class. Our large computer screen displays workouts that members engage with throughout their sessions. Our body composition testing machine requires a stable internet connection for results to be immediately shared. 

When I acquired CrossFit Coordinate, it was running on DSL service. The reliability was poor, and the cost was high. 

Determined to improve our service, I went through considerable effort to get coaxial service installed. The building permissions, the coordination, the setup — it was all a significant undertaking. Initially, I was optimistic. The service cost less than DSL and seemed faster.

But then came the rain.

Every time we had heavy rainfall, our internet connection went down. For a 24/7 gym, this was catastrophic. Picture this: someone wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to work out at 5 a.m., drives to the gym, and discovers they can't get in because the internet is down and the doors won't unlock. They're going to text me, and often I'd have to drive over and manually let them in.

The reliability issues affected our classes too. If coaches couldn't display the workout on screen because the internet was down, how would class participants know what to do? Without music streaming, people were working out without their motivating music.

When I learned that GFiber was available in our area, I didn't hesitate. The difference has been remarkable! Since installing GFiber, we've had virtually zero connectivity issues. The Wi-Fi reaches every part of our 5,000-square-foot facility, without any extenders or additional equipment. Members can connect their devices to stream their own music on our speakers, kids can use iPads while parents work out, and our business operations run seamlessly.

The reliability supports everything from virtual nutrition coaching sessions (we work with clients as far away as California) to our marketing and sales processes. When prospective members visit, they need internet access to view our programs and complete their purchase process. Our social media presence, member management software, and all our digital tools depend on consistent connectivity.

What we don't need is excessive bandwidth; we typically use 400-500 megabits per second, which is more than sufficient for streaming music, basic browsing, and supporting 3-5 concurrent users during peak times. What we absolutely require is reliability.

GFiber has delivered that reliability at a price point lower than what we were paying our previous provider. In fact, when that competitor calls trying to win us back, I tell them point-blank: if their service were free, I would never switch back.

The Bottom Line for Fitness Businesses
For any small business owner, understand that internet connectivity isn't optional anymore. It's foundational infrastructure. Whether you're running 24/7 access, streaming content, managing customer data, or building community through digital engagement, your internet service must be reliable.

If you're in the Cary and Apex, NC  area and looking for a fitness community that will hold you accountable and deliver results, we'd love to have you visit. And if you're a fellow gym owner struggling with internet reliability, consider making the switch to GFiber. Your members and your business will thank you.

Posted by Peter Ghali, Owner/Coach, Crossfit Coordinate

Ready to discover where community and fitness intersect? Learn more about CrossFit Coordinate and our programs, including remote nutrition coaching available nationwide.

When reliability meets affordability, small businesses thrive

An unexpected crisis struck Office Ours just three days after opening their Garner location. The co-working provider's internet went down for 36 hours, leaving their new tenants stranded without connectivity.

"Here we are, a day into the outage, and we still can't get anyone from our internet provider to tell us when it'll be fixed," recalls Ryan Rangel, Office Ours founder and president. "We had maybe 10 people who had just moved in and were paying us rent to provide them a good office environment. I called continuously for all 36 hours and for the whole outage no one could tell me when it would come back online."

That moment made it clear: for small business owners, internet connectivity isn't just a service, it's the lifeline that keeps operations running smoothly. That lifeline needed to be stronger than ever to support 150+ businesses – ranging from massage therapists to counselors to IT startups – across four Raleigh-area locations and one in nearby Sanford, North Carolina.

Office Ours tried two different internet service providers before GFiber. Desiring more reliability, Ryan didn't hesitate to make the switch to GFiber once service was available in Raleigh. The switch brought immediate benefits that went far beyond speed to Office Ours’ four Raleigh-area locations. 

GFiber was a game-changer from the very start, at installation. GFiber didn't just provide one connection per building; they installed individual ports for each office suite, creating all-new flexibility for tenants.

This infrastructure upgrade opened new possibilities for Office Ours' diverse tenant base. Previously, they lost a promising tech startup that needed robust upload speeds for nightly server backups, something their previous service couldn't handle with its limited 20 megabit per second upload capacity.

This flexibility has become a powerful sales tool. "When I'm doing tours and I mention GFiber, people light up a little bit more," Office Ours vice president for sales and marketing Amy Brewer notes.

Beyond the technical capabilities, GFiber's monitoring and support system has impressed the Office Ours team.

"GFiber tells you you're down before you even notice it yourself," Ryan says. "Sometimes they'll have it fixed before you even notice it went down."

The reliability difference is stark. While their previous provider required monthly service calls across their five locations, Ryan can't remember the last time a GFiber technician needed to visit.

Office Ours serves approximately 90-plus businesses with physical offices and 150 total customers including virtual office clients. The company's growth ambitions are equally impressive. They're planning to start the process of doubling in size in 2026, with GFiber expected to be their first call for any new Wake County locations.

"The way any business scales is you have to have the same service at every location," Ryan explains. "Having GFiber as our constant across Wake County locations gives us that consistency."

What sets GFiber apart in the business market isn't just the technology, Ryan shares. It's the approach. While other fiber providers require long-term contracts, GFiber offers month-to-month service even for multi-location businesses like Office Ours.

"GFiber is the most reasonably priced, and you're the only one that doesn't make us sign contracts," he emphasizes. "We’re set up at four locations and don’t require more than month-to-month service."

The Bottom Line for Small Business
For small business owners considering their connectivity options, Ryan’s advice is simple: "It's really about reliability. The moment we moved to GFiber, all those intermittent connectivity issues disappeared."

Office Ours' story demonstrates how the right internet infrastructure can impact not just day-to-day operations, it also supports long-term growth potential. By providing reliable, scalable connectivity without restrictive contracts, GFiber enables small businesses to focus on what they do best: serving their customers and growing their operations.

Posted by Michael Cole, GFiber Head of Sales, East Region.

 
And the results speak for themselves. 
 
Since the program began: 

• Participating organizations have experienced an average of 243% revenue growth within five years of entering the cohort. 
  
• Charitable contributions for these organizations increased by over $763,000 on average. 
  
• 29 of the 30 alumni are still actively leading or working in the Triangle’s social sector. 
  
• The leaders’ platforms have expanded nationally, appearing on CNN, Good Morning America, Forbes, and even on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Posted by Crystal WIlson, Chief Outreach Officer, United Way of the Greater Triangle.

At GFiber, we’re determined to stay ahead of what’s next, especially when it has the potential to make our customers’ experience better. This year, we rolled out new lifestyle-based internet products to customers across the vast majority of our cities. And last week, we successfully demoed a new capability with Nokia that pushes the boundaries of possibility for the customer experience: network slicing.

TLDR: it gives us the ability to carve up a customer’s home network into different “lanes,” each optimized for a specific use. 

In our GFiber Labs demo, we used gaming as the test scenario. We ran two gaming consoles next to each other and injected congestion into the network with the lab’s traffic generator. Predictably, things fell apart: lag, stuttering, pixelation.* Then we carved out a dedicated lane (a “slice”) in the network that reserved bandwidth just for  gaming traffic. The result: the driving game demo went from jittery and glitchy to smooth and responsive. 

This was a foundational test. And it worked.

In the long-term, this could truly change how home internet works, especially when it’s driven by the customer. Today’s one-size-fits-all connections treat all traffic the same. But we know not everyone uses the internet the same way: gamers care about latency, remote workers need video stability, home businesses rely on solid uptime and security, and, we can see a future where applications (AI, VR, etc.) may require next-level performance. Network slicing could be how we level up network performance.  

Network slicing opens the door to something new: the ability for customers to tailor their connection to the categories of Internet use that matter most in their home. It’s not about prioritizing traffic behind the scenes, it’s about giving you more control, more flexibility, and more ways to get the performance you need, when you need it. And with GFiber, it will always be in service of giving customers more control, without compromising our commitment to an open, unrestricted internet.

There’s also potential for something called “transactional slices.” These would spin up automatically, just for a few seconds, to keep things like financial logins secure. For example, connecting you directly to a service like your bank without routing traffic across the broader internet. You wouldn’t even notice it happening, but it could add meaningful peace of mind.

Network slicing is the next logical step in how we think about GFiber service — especially our lifestyle products like Core, Home, and Edge, built to meet the needs of customers’ unique internet lifestyles. Those products are designed to better match the way people live and work. Network slicing takes that a step further: adding real-time customization and control at the network level.

While we’re very excited about the possibilities here, there are few things that have to happen before we roll out network slicing across our network. Automation is a key piece of the puzzle. We’ll be diving deeper with Nokia later this year to explore how we can bring some of these ideas to life. This kind of innovation is exactly what GFiber Labs was built for and we’re excited about potentially leveling up the GFiber customer experience — again.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Nick Saporito, Head of Product