Brad Welch, who joined CentraCom at age 20 advances to president and CEO

FAIRVIEW—When Brad Welch walked into CentraCom as a 20-year-old in January 1998, he was a young technician helping rural customers hear the beeps and buzzes of dial-up internet for the very first time. Twenty-eight years later, he has been named president of the company, bringing with him a rare combination of deep technical experience, empathy-driven leadership and a long view of what reliable, affordable connectivity means for rural Utah.

“I started Jan. 26, 1998, and so I would have been 20 years old,” Welch recalled. “I’ve now been here 28 years, six months, and 12 days.” In those early days, CentraCom was still a small local operation.

“I actually remember when we hit 100 [internet] subscribers,” he said.

Today, the company serves around 27,000 residential subscribers and operates a significant enterprise business that stretches across the state and beyond.

From Dial-Up to a Statewide Fiber Network

Welch’s path to president and CEO of CentraCom did not begin in a business school boardroom, but in hospital hallways and server closets.

In Ogden, he had originally gone to Weber State to become a nurse.

“I was too empathetic to be a nurse,” he said, explaining that he struggled to leave the emotional weight of patients’ experiences at work.

That same desire to help others led him into information technology.

“I started doing IT for McKay-Dee Hospital… they were just starting to put computers in every single exam room,” he said.

That work, combined with computer networking studies, launched him fully into the world of IT.

When Welch moved to Sanpete County to be closer to family, local internet access was still in its infancy. He worked at Hanson Lumber and did side work for Burgoyne Computers, helping bring dial-up internet to Mount Pleasant. CentraCom took notice. Eddie Cox invited Welch to join the company and “take over the responsibilities of the internet.”

Back then, he said, “it was dial-up internet and email… then the transition to when people started buying a second phone line so that their first phone line wasn’t a busy signal.”

From there, he helped CentraCom through early DSL technology — “six mg services was the best you could get… now we’re at gig, which is 1000 mg” — and into cable modem and fiber networks.

Today, CentraCom’s footprint is far larger than the small office where Welch started.

“We go as far north as Bear Lake, Garden City, Lake Town. We go west to Nevada, Wendover, both Utah and the Nevada side… we have fiber all along I-15 from Spanish Fork all the way to North Salt Lake, and we go all the way to Saint George to the south,” he said.

When Welch was hired, he believes he was the ninth employee.

“Now we are at 177 employees,” he said, noting additional contracted construction crews on top of that.

The growth from nine to nearly 200 jobs over less than three decades has been matched by rising responsibility for Welch himself.

A Leader Who Has “Had His Hands in Everything”

Over nearly three decades, Welch has done almost every job in the company.

“I was the technician that actually installed internet in people’s homes way back in the dial-up days,” he said.

Later, he moved into enterprise sales, helping secure major contracts with Intermountain Healthcare, school districts, cell carriers and large businesses across Utah.

“We were taking down big circuits, Intermountain Healthcare, Questar, the cell companies, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T. All of them run on our fiber,” Welch explained.

While many providers started by courting small businesses first, CentraCom pursued a different strategy, going after “these big ones, and then [going] back and then [starting] working with the smaller businesses after.”

That approach, he said, “is what expedited the growth so fast.”

Over time, Welch’s responsibilities broadened further.

“I’ve spent time in sales and marketing, and then I spent time in project management, and then eventually they put me over a whole bunch of people,” he said with a smile. “Outside of accounting… I’ve kind of had my hands at some point in time in everything.”

Today, in addition to leading CentraCom, Welch oversees networks for the company’s parent organization, LICT, which operates telephone and broadband companies in several states. He also serves as vice chair of the US Telecom Association’s leadership committee in Washington, D.C.

Vision: Stronger Together, Locally Grounded

Welch steps into the presidency following longtime leaders Eddie and Branch Cox, whose influence he credits for both his own development and the company’s direction.

“Eddie and Branch are the finest examples to work for that you could ever ask for,” Welch said.

From Eddie, he learned that “if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.” From Branch, he learned that you “don’t ask anybody to do a job you wouldn’t do” — a lesson reinforced by watching Branch be “the first one with the shovel down inside the ditch.”

Those examples have shaped Welch’s vision for CentraCom’s future: continued expansion where it matters most and a culture that puts people and community first.

On the business side, that means strategically growing fiber and services in both urban and rural areas while keeping prices fair.

“We’re going to provide the best quality service for the lowest possible cost to our areas because we are dealing with our neighbors and friends,” Welch said.

Even with rising fuel and material costs, he noted, “we haven’t raised prices. We have no intention to raise prices… we’re giving more bandwidth for the same cost.”

Future offerings will include value-added services such as bundled cellular plans and streaming platforms to compete with national carriers while still keeping a local, accountable presence.

“We’re soon going to be able to offer cellular service that is still riding a national carrier, but bundle it on your bills just like the bigger carriers,” he said.

Culture, Core Values and Community

If there is a single theme to Welch’s leadership, it is culture, inside the company and in the communities CentraCom serves.

“The primary focus for me is to make sure that we provide good jobs and good service to the customers.”

“We kind of got rid of vision statements and mission statements, and now we’re working on culture instead,” he explained. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

CentraCom has invested in strong benefits — “our health insurance is 100% paid for with a robust 401k” — and emphasizes long-term stability for families.

The impact became visible at a recent employee party, where families and even grandkids filled a local park.

“It’s 177 employees, some with families of four, some that bring their grandkids, and it’s all dependent on this [company],” Welch said humbly. “It weighs heavy when you see the decisions you’re making and how quickly it can affect everybody else.”

That sense of responsibility extends beyond payroll to the broader community.

“We’re community based,” Welch said. “Recognize who is sponsoring the T-ball team… the community barbecues in the park. We want to be the first ones to show up.”

From sponsoring local sports to supporting events and emergencies in places like Meadow, Kanosh, Manti and Gunnison, Welch sees CentraCom’s role as intertwined with the people it serves.

“We live in these same communities,” he said. “We’re not going to sign on to something that is negative to the communities that the kids that were at the barbecue are going to be left with.”

As Welch looks toward the next two decades as a rough horizon for his own tenure, his focus remains clear: Keep building reliable networks, good jobs and a culture of service grounded in the values he learned from Branch and Eddie Cox.

“We have some of the best people,” he said. “Everybody feels like we’re building it together.”