Exploring the Great Outdoors with Ting Service Supervisor Joshua Donato

While they love our reliable, lightning-fast fiber internet, Ting customers will tell you that a big part of their great experience is our dedication to customer service and support. There’s a very simple explanation for this: We hire great people. Ting employees are knowledgeable and passionate about what they do. They’re also interesting as heck! Here’s a chance to get to know one of our amazing local team members. We’re internet that gets you.

Please tell us your name and role with Ting.

My name is Joshua Donato. I am the service supervisor for Ting’s installation department in Centennial, Colorado

What’s your favorite part of your role in your town?

That's a good question. I would say my overall favorite part is how eager we are and our positive work mentality. Every day, we do our best to strive for a great work environment. We're picking each other up—co-workers and team members alike! It’s just a great, positive working environment. Uplifting and challenging.

It’s amazing to hear about the focus on co-worker support. In so many companies’ work cultures, that's missing.

Exactly! It’s the default for us.

Tell us about a regular day for you.

Most workdays start off in the office gearing up and getting ready for the day. We make sure that we're paying attention to our workflow, our work orders and what exactly needs to be done for the day. We actually spend the end of the previous day preparing to make this easier. After making sure that the central office has everything they need from our shop, we send everybody out to the field to start tackling the projects on the install team’s agenda.

We’re adding new neighborhoods all the time, so most of the time we have installs booked and scheduled throughout the day. We ensure our drop team¹ or other required specialist is always available to help our installation department with the day’s residential and commercial work orders. The day can consist of anything from blowing fiber to numerous installs to working at a cabinet—or even going out in the field and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Do you have any interesting stories from a particular installation?

I always like to joke around about when I was a new technician and learning how to put fiber in the ground. They teach you what ends to cut and what ends not to cut. And as we're building out one of our new neighborhoods, I ended up cutting an entire main line of fiber for our network [due to being confused about] how to separate the fiber itself! It resulted in probably two weeks' worth of additional work

Oh no!

[laughing] It was probably the most intense way to learn what cord to cut. Thankfully, [the area] wasn’t live yet, so I didn’t take down a whole neighborhood!

Have you worked with other ISPs? If so, what makes Ting different?

I’ve worked with a couple of others, actually. What makes us so different is just our overall work culture as well as our dedication to customer satisfaction. We strive here at Ting to make sure that, as an employer, we're taking care of our employees. Employees feel that they're being heard, seen and taken care of a little bit differently than with most other companies.

That translates into our customer service. When you have an environment where your employees are so well taken care of, they want to go that extra mile to help take care of the customers—making sure that customer education, customer experience and customer satisfaction are all up to standard.

Why is reliable internet important to you?

Video games! I’m kidding. Just connectivity. I came from the end of the generation that experienced the [advent of the internet]. I lived in the days of dial-up, where as a kid we couldn't get on the internet because somebody was on the phone. Now we’re actually able to stream and take care of the things that we need to on a day-to-day basis. It's turning into a virtual world, and a lot of folks are able to work from home and build their offices at home now. So [now you need the] comfort of a fast, reliable network, allowing each other to do the jobs we need to.

We actually hope you weren’t kidding about video games because our next question is: Do you play any? If so, what have you been playing lately?

Oh, absolutely. Well, everybody loves the Call of Duty series! Actually, I'm into a little bit of the older stuff like the Halo video games. I'm an Xbox guy, so I've been playing that quite a bit. Then there’s the silly ones, [like] Minecraft online and things like that.

Have you been streaming any good shows recently?

One of my favorite ones has been the “Vikings” series. I started with the original one and then ended up rolling into “Vikings: Valhalla.” I also just went through the “Outer Banks” series. I also watch [Yellowstone franchise series] “1923,” “1883” and some of those Westerns.

You love those period pieces.

Yeah! History has been a big thing for me; I've always loved history. I'm even getting into watching some documentaries on ancient ruins and things like that.

And what are you listening to these days?

Everything, to be honest. I love jazz, country, hip-hop and the new electronic style of music. I picked up a guitar about two to three years ago and I've been teaching myself. And I'll tell you, nothing has been more challenging than trying to learn an instrument by yourself. But it’s also one of the most relaxing and mentally stimulating things that I've done in a long time.

What’s a good local place in Centennial to get coffee or food from?

Dutch Bros is probably the normal go-to—it’s always a go-to out here! There's actually a really cool tea shop that I just found online, the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. One of my favorite spots to eat is a saloon down at the foothills of the mountains [called] Dirty Dawgs. It gives you a perfect view of the mountains, and you get to watch the sunset right behind it!

What ice cream flavor do you order when you go out for an ice cream cone?

I'm the vanilla/chocolate dip guy. So vanilla, but dipped in chocolate with the hard outer shell like Dairy Queen, you know? Like from the carnival days.

What do you love about living in Centennial?

Colorado is actually my home state—I’ve pretty much been here my whole life. I love the fact that we can get a day like yesterday where it was an absolute blizzard, and then today we have 50 going on 60 degrees and sunshine. And the snow never sticks around. We have probably 300-plus beautiful sunny days a year here in Colorado.

What does a regular evening look like for you in Centennial?

I'm a pretty homestyle guy! I kind of grew up traditionally with a large family. We did the “come home, cook dinner, eat around the dinner table, and maybe watch a movie or play some card games with the family, then call it a night” type of thing. Weekends, maybe snowboarding on a Saturday. If the weather is nice enough, get out on Sunday. I like to ride motorcycles, so my significant other and I will take our motorcycle rides. We'll go do our thing for the day: putter around trying to find that new cool restaurant or antique store or whatever we want to check out for the day. Plus lots of regional activity: hiking, skiing, camping, fishing, motorcycling, riding—anything outdoors, you'll find us there!

Thanks so much, Josh.

Have a great day!

1. A fiber drop is the connection of an outdoor access point to the outside of a customer’s home.