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High Cost Program Success Story
Mid-Rivers Telephone Co-op, Inc. - Montana
Mid-Rivers Communications (Mid-Rivers), headquartered in Circle, Montana, provides telephone service to a 30,000 square mile area covering 21 counties of eastern Montana and three counties in North Dakota. Geographically, this makes Mid-Rivers the largest telephone cooperative in the continental United States.
With Universal Service Fund (USF) support from the High Cost Program, Mid-Rivers is able to provide service to residents in an area where there are less than 0.6 people living per square mile. Mid-Rivers provides telecommunications service through approximately 22,000 access lines, with over 80% of those lines serving residential customers. If not for USF support, many of Mid-Rivers' customers would go without telecommunications services because many of them make less than the state median income.
Mid-Rivers serves an area the size of West Virginia.
The low subscriber density makes telecommunications development without USF support prohibitively expensive. Mid-Rivers operates over 10,100 route miles of telephone line serving 16,500 residential lines and 5,500 business lines.
Gerry Anderson, general manager of Mid-Rivers, says, "USF allows us to build out our networks and provide service to traditionally unserved and underserved communities. We are also continuously expanding in order to provide our customers with the highest quality and latest technology in communications capabilities." Mid-Rivers is actively engaged within the communities it serves by also participating in the other USF support programs such as Low Income, Rural Health Care, and School & Libraries.
