It took less than a day for the phenomenon of scooters to roll across the local college town of Stillwater, home to Oklahoma State University and 25,000 students. The electric scooter company, Spin, allows students and residents mobility across the 30-square-mile town by placing rentable scooters throughout Stillwater and OSU’s campus. 

Many students walk to and throughout the 700-acre campus from their homes or designated parking spots, making the scooter company a staple not only on campus but also throughout Stillwater.

“Spin’s scooters connect students to the community, and from personal experience – they are a lot of fun!” said Mark Prather, Centranet’s President of Fiber and Technology. “Centranet works to better our local communities through connectivity, which is why we are so happy to have Spin as a business subscriber.”  

The scooters are app-based and used daily, making Centranet crucial to their business, local students and residents. For business and residential subscribers, reliability and affordability are key components that set Centranet apart from local competitors. 

Spin, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Co. based in San Francisco, brought 200 scooters to the OSU campus in January 2019. The scooters, which are available from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and rented through Spin’s app, are charged and updated each night at their warehouse outside of Stillwater utilizing Centranet’s high-speed fiber connection. 

Zipping around town is not the only benefit to students and residents, it also provides an extra source of income for those who pick up the scooters and take them to the warehouse for charging and updating each night. The scooters are dropped off at designated locations each morning. 

Similar to how Centranet provides affordable pricing to subscribers, Spin worked with OSU to lower rental expenses for students, faculty and staff by halving the cost of the standard unlock rental fee from $1 to 50 cents. 

Centranet, LLC, is a locally owned and operated subsidiary of Central Rural Electric Cooperative located in Stillwater, Okla. Centranet serves more than 6,000 residential and business subscribers and is a member of the Cooperative Broadband Coalition.