United Telephone Mutual Aid

We are proud to say that we have provided outstanding service to our customers since 1952. Here's a brief look back at how it all started, and how we became the communications company we are today. In February of 1952, more than 400 farmers from Ramsey, Towner, Cavalier, Nelson and Benson counties met in Devils Lake, North Dakota to discuss the formation of a rural telephone cooperative. From that meeting, an 11-man organizing committee was elected, and United Telephone Cooperative was born. During the next seven years, we made significant progress in the growth and success of the organization. We established our headquarters in Langdon, ND, instead, changed our name to United Telephone Mutual Aid Corporation, and elected our first Board of Directors. From 1955 to 1958, we made an important purchase of the exchange at Langdon from the North Dakota Telephone Company and also purchased the Osnabrock Telephone Company, the Milton Telephone Company, the Sarles Telephone Company, the Hannah Telephone Company and a total of 20 additional farmer-owned lines. Shortly after that, the Langdon exchange became the first in our system to be cut over to modern dial service. During the next two years, dial exchanges at Sarles, Milton, Wales, Munich, Walhalla and Rock Lake were established, with the Egeland exchange being the last to be cut over in February of 1960. In 1968, we installed direct dial equipment and began offering 1+ dialing. Now subscribers could make long-distance calls directly, without the intervention of an operator. This feature is virtually everywhere today. In addition to upgrades to our system, such as burying all rural plant facilities and modernizing to single party lines, the 1970s were an exciting time for us. Most significantly, we worked with the U.S. Department of Defense to establish facilities for the anti-ballistic missile site being constructed at the Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Complex in Nekoma, ND. This site was designed to defend the offensive Minuteman missiles based at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, in the event of a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile attack by the Soviet Union or China. Additionally, during the mid 1970s, we installed a Motorola Improved Mobile Telephone System (MITS) and a paging system, offering mobile telephone service to some of our subscribers. Two decades later, in the 1990s, we brought TV service to rural northeastern North Dakota. We constructed two Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) TV sites, one in Egeland and the other located in Milton. This new service allowed rural residents of northeastern North Dakota to receive a quality TV signal. At the same time, we also upgraded to an all-digital fiber-optic network and installed Stromberg Carlson DCO switches. In 1991, we established the United Telephone Educational Foundation. This foundation provides financial assistance to high school seniors and other first-term college students throughout eastern and central North Dakota who wish to further their education. Since its establishment, the foundation has awarded nearly $450,000 to graduating seniors. Not long after, in 1996, we teamed up with three other companies (North Dakota Telephone, Polar Communications, and Dakota Central), forming North Dakota Long Distance (NDLD) to provide long distance service to our customers. NDLD now provides long-distance service to another six local telecommunications providers in North Dakota.