Staff writer
In keeping with its mission to enhance communications for its customers, Tri-County Telephone Association, Inc., of Council Grove, continues to expand its services to rural customers in northern Marion, Dickinson, and Morris counties.
The company is in the process of providing digital cable television. To be delivered through underground telephone lines, the service will provide access to hundreds of television channels and can be streamlined to fit the customer’s needs and desires.
Tri-County Telephone (TCT) has transmission agreements with telecommunications providers in the Wichita, Topeka, and Kansas City areas, giving the company a unique opportunity to offer a wide range of TV channels.
The new cable network will make analog TVs compliant with the Feb. 15 mandatory change to digital transmissions.
According to Scott Bankes, marketing manager, TCT has been working for five years to develop the service, and the response has been good. At least 100 customers in Council Grove have been connected so far, continuing at a rate of approximately 15 per day.
The company expects to be making cable connections to subscribers in the Lincolnville area after the first of the year, expanding to the remainder of its Marion County service area during the first three months of the year.
TCT also is establishing a local TV channel. The company has purchased more than $100,000 of equipment which has been donated to area schools along with training on how to use it.
The local channel will provide seven schools and communities with a means to televise tapings of community and sporting events as well as 4-H shows, cooking shows, or anything else that leaders would like to share with their communities.
Journalism/media classes will benefit by learning how to film, edit, write script, and add graphics to recordings.
Bankes said a marketing sales representative has been appointed to be involved full-time in administering local TV programming.
“It’s going to be really neat,” Bankes said. “It will give small communities a chance to promote their activities and also help young people develop skills for the future.”
In the near future, the company plans to provide a local weather channel. It will report weather for each of the three counties, including a 60-300-mile radar sweep and a 10-day forecast.
Bundling for economy
The company is offering a bundle of services — long distance telephone, Internet, cable TV — at lower than normal rates to residences and businesses which subscribe to local services. Customers receive cost savings by committing to two of the three additional services for at least two years.
Bankes said TCT has a mission to provide enhanced community services, so it is pursuing the ability to provide cellular service.
The company was an original shareholder in Kansas Cellular, but the service was lost after Kansas Cellular merged with a larger company.
Along with other rural telephone companies, TCT has purchased Spectrum Cellular to provide renewed service. Antennae already are in place on tall buildings in several of the towns in the service area.
Agreements are being finalized which will allow nationwide coverage through national partnerships. Those partnerships also will allow TCT to provide the newest technology in cellular phones.
“Our rural customers will have the same service, the same opportunities as those in metropolitan areas,” Bankes said.
Customers who subscribe to local service with Tri-County Telephone Co., Inc., automatically become shareholders. Yearly profits go back to shareholders in the form of dividends.
“While customers might just be a number in some places, at TC TELCO they are part of our family,” Bankes said.
Specific information on the company’s services may be found on its website: www.tctelco.net.