National Cooperative Month: Celebrate Gigabit Cooperatives

Time to celebrate the work of rural cooperatives that bring high-quality Internet access to residents and businesses forgotten by national corporate providers. October is National Cooperative Month! Let’s celebrate some of the accomplishments of those cooperatives providing next-generation connectivity. 

We pulled together a list of cooperatives who were actively advertising residential access to a Gigabit (1,000 Mbps) at the end of 2015. These cooperatives rang in 2016 with Gigabit speeds, inspiring others to improve rural connectivity throughout the U.S.

To assemble the list, we used Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Form 477 data from December 2015 to find all the providers advertising a residential Gigabit download speed. This generated a list of about 200 providers. Those providers were then manually sorted into “cooperative” or “not cooperative” based on publicly available information. If you would like to make a correction or suggestion concerning this list, please email htrostle@ilsr.org

2015’s Gigabit Cooperatives

• Ace Telephone Association, also known as Ace Communications or AcenTek, in Minnesota
• Adams Telephone Cooperative in Illinois
• Albany Mutual Telephone Association in Minnesota
• Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation (ATMC) in North Carolina
• Ben Lomand in Tennessee
• Breda Telephone, also known as Western Iowa Networks, in Iowa
• Canby Telephone Association in Oregon
• Chequamegon Communications Cooperative, also known as Norvado, in Wisconsin
• Clay County Rural Telephone Cooperative, also known as Endeavor, in Indiana

• Co-Mo Electric Cooperative in Missouri
• Cochrane Cooperative Telephone Company in Wisconsin
• Danville Mutual Telephone Company in Iowa
• Dickey Rural Telephone Cooperative in North Dakota
• Eastern Oregon Telecom in Oregon
• Emery Telcom in Utah
• ENMR Telephone Cooperative, also known as Plateau, in New Mexico
• Gervais Telephone Company, also known as DataVision Cooperative, in Oregon
• Farmers Cooperative Telephone Company in Iowa
• Farmers Mutual Telephone Company in Iowa
• Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative in Alabama
• Farmers Telephone Cooperative in South Carolina
• Garden Valley Telephone in Minnesota
• Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Association in Minnesota

• Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative in Texas
• Halstad Telephone Company in North Dakota
• NineStar Connect in Indiana
• Hill Country Telephone Cooperative in Texas
• Kingdom Telephone Company in Missouri
• LaValle Telephone Cooperative in Wisconsin
• Lavaca Telephone Company, also known as Pinnacle, in Arkansas
• Matanuska Telephone Association in Alaska
• McDonough Telephone Cooperative in Illinois
• Midwest Energy Cooperative, also known as Midwest Connections, in Michigan
• Molalla Communications Company in Oregon
• Nemont Telephone Cooperative in North Dakota
• North Central Telephone Cooperative in Kentucky
• North Dakota Telephone Company in North Dakota
• North Georgia Network in Georgia
• Northwest Communications Cooperative in North Dakota
• Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative in Minnesota
• Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation in Kentucky
• Peoples Telecommunications in Kansas
• Phillips County Telephone Company in Colorado
• Pineland Telephone Cooperative in Georgia
• Polar Communication Mutual Aid Corporation in North Dakota
• Red River Rural Telephone Association in North Dakota
• Reservation Telephone Cooperative in North Dakota
• Richland-Grant Telephone Cooperative in Wisconsin
• Roosevelt County Rural Telephone Cooperative, also known as Yucca Telecom, in New Mexico

• RS Fiber Cooperative in Minnesota
• Rural Telephone Service, also known as Nex-Tech, in Kansas
• Santel Communications Cooperative, also known as Mitchell Telecom, in South Dakota
• Sho-Me Power Electric Cooperative, also known as Sho-Me Technologies, in Missouri
• Skyline Telephone Membership Corporation in North Carolina
• South Central Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation in Kentucky
• South Central Utah Telephone Association in Utah
• Springville Cooperative Telephone Association in Iowa
• Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative Corporation in Tennessee
• UBTA-UBET Communications, also known as Strata Networks, in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming
• United Electric Cooperative, also known as United Services, in Missouri
• UTMA, also known as United Communications and Turtle Mountain Communications, in North Dakota
• Valley Telephone Cooperative in Texas
• Venture Communications Cooperative in South Dakota
• Western Telephone Company in South Dakota
• West Carolina Rural Telephone Cooperative in South Carolina
• West Central Telephone in Minnesota
• West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative in Kentucky
• West Wisconsin Telcom Cooperative in Wisconsin
• Wilkes Telecommunications in North Carolina

Smart Rural Communities

The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA -  the Rural Broadband Association) has also created the Smart Rural Communities Program to recognize the achievements of cooperatives taking on high-speed connectivity projects. The program includes a Gig-certification process. Even if a cooperative does not advertise a Gigabit (which means they won’t appear on our list), the cooperative still has the ability to provide Gigabit connectivity. Check out the NTCA map of those cooperatives at SmartRuralCommunity.com. 

2016’s Growing Gigabit Cooperatives

A number of other cooperatives have recently moved forward with Gigabit community projects. Consolidated Telephone Company (CTC), the telephone cooperative out of Brainerd, Minnesota, launched its Gigabit speed tier this year. This summer, the Custer Telephone Cooperative in rural Idaho announced a new fiber project. The cooperative’s current goal is to offers speeds of 100 Mbps, and eventually a Gigabit Internet access speeds. Other cooperatives are in the early stages of their fiber projects, such as Duck River Electric in Tennessee. The number of cooperatives taking on these projects continues to grow.

An increasing number of cooperatives are recognizing that high-speed Internet access is necessary to keep the rural U.S. competitive. Cooperatives are a community-owned, local solution to connectivity problems. You can learn about how telephone and electric cooperatives are leading the charge to bring high-quality Internet access to rural regions in North Carolina in our most recent report. Download a copy of North Carolina Connectivity: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. To keep up to date with stories about community networks, subscribe to our newsletter and follow @MuniNetworks on Twitter.

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks, Creative Commons license