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30th Year Recognition of Telephone Operations
Background
Material of NTC Benefactors
Written by David Bouker
January 16, 2005 marked
the 30 th anniversary of Nushagak Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (NTC),
a telephone company which later was merged with Nushagak Electric Cooperative
to become part of the current entity known as Nushagak Cooperative, Inc.
NTC took over operation from Interior Telephone Company, which had been
operating the system for North State Telephone Company for approximately
eight months. North State Telephone Company was one of the very few utilities
that had been de-certified by the Alaska Public Utilities Commission
due to the very poor telephone service they had provided. A group of
ladies, led by Dorothy Anderson here in Dillingham, started a newspaper
called the Bristol Bay Bylines; they actually began the decertification
process by publicizing the quality of the telephone service and supporting
local efforts to start our own telephone system. At that time there were
approximately 200 telephone subscribers, with almost everyone on a party
line. Some lines, such as one on Woodriver Road, had as many as 10 parties
on a single line.
The outside physical plant took essentially two forms.
Part of it was attached to the Nushagak Electric Cooperative (NEC) power
poles, in some notable cases by rope attaching the telephone cable to
power poles. The line across the flats to Windmill Hill and out to Kanakanak
was a 50 pair air-filled cable lying exposed on the ground. Approximately
every thousand feet there were signs posted to warn people of “exposed
telephone cable.” One of these signs still exists in the bushes
near Orville Braswell’s old house but the wording is no longer
legible.
Long distance service at that time consisted of two working
toll trunks (compared to 179 at this time!) that were switched out of
the FAA maintenance building at Kanakanak, from there to King Salmon
and in turn over the White Alice (military warning and communication)
system to Anchorage.
Unfortunately, the management at NEC had difficulty
communicating with the owners of North State Telephone Company; as a
result, attempts to get the service improved and the system cleaned up
were largely a losing effort. Additionally, REA who financed NEC was
really not too interested in financing the startup of a small rural telephone
system that was apparently not even marginally profitable.
Fortunately,
Albert Ball, a long-time resident of the area and president of the newly
formed NTC, did have a good line of open communication with the president
of North State Telephone Company; his efforts saved the day in coming
to an agreement to purchase the assets of NST. This agreement or transaction
was formalized on a napkin provided at a breakfast meeting at the Anchorage
Westward Hotel (later known as the Anchorage Hilton Hotel.) The purchase
price was $140,000 plus the deposits (just under $5,000) of the existing
customers.
At last we were in business! But we had no money. All efforts
up to this point had been financed by NEC, although we did borrow $25,000
from the local branch of the National Bank of Alaska. We then had to
take over operation from Interior Telephone Company, the operators of
the system after North State had been decertified eight months previously.
As previously mentioned, that takeover date was January 16, 1975. To
further complicate matters, Interior Telephone Company was owed approximately
$22,000 from the NST customers for local and long distance services rendered;
needless to say, NTC didn’t have that kind of cash available. We
had to gear up overnight, hire a technician, and perform countless other
tasks pursuant to getting into the telephone business (about which we
knew next to nothing!)
The biggest problem was a lack of money and other
resources. NEC Board of Directors went out on a limb to support NTC’s
new operation, but we really had to get an infusion of cash and hire
a competent technician quickly in order to maintain operations and improve
the service; this meant essentially rebuilding the system from the ground
up. We had promised the membership this and we had to show something
for their trust. For this, we really put the arm on REA. Since they were
not really overjoyed at our efforts, they decided to make some rather
onerous requirements of us that would either make us or break us. One
of their requirements was that we had to enlist 358 members (when there
were only 200 existing customers) and that we had to collect a membership
fee of $10 from each one of them. The only way we could get 358 members
was to get all the families in Aleknagik to sign up as well. At that
time, there were only 11 telephones on the Lake Road and these were served
by a cable lying across the bushes and driveways extending up to Lars
Nelson’s house.
This meant that the funds needed from REA would
have to cover the cost of extending service to Aleknagik and over to
the North Shore and Island. We approached George Ilutsik concerning the
problem. He was advised that if the people of Aleknagik signed up for
telephone service we would extend the service to Aleknagik and over to
the North Shore and Island; delivering the service at the same price
the residents of Dillingham would be paying. George took us at our word
and he delivered every family in Aleknagik as members, which enabled
us to meet the REA requirements. What made this unusual was that the
economy in the mid seventies was not very good. In fact, President Nixon
proclaimed this area an economic disaster area in 1974 (I think just
before he resigned).
The $10 membership fee was double that of NEC and
it had to have been a financial burden on some of the families in Aleknagik
at that time. The suspicion was that George Ilutsik may have paid some
of the fees himself. At any rate, that helped us immeasurably in getting
started. If it were not for Albert Ball and George Ilutsik, we would
not have a member-owned telephone utility today.
To complete the saga
of getting the system going, we had made a promise to extend telephone
service to the North Shore and to the area that we call the Island. This
effort was achieved in August or September of 1976. The contractor that
we had utilized to build our outside plant refused to do that part of
the job because of what he termed “technical
difficulties.” After some head scratching, we came up with a workable
plan and buried, three feet below the river bottom, a 50 pair cable to
the North Shore; subsequently, we laid a 25 pair cable to the Island.
Several of the local folks helped us implement the plan; among them
were Pavela Chuckwuk (using his fishing boat, the Lilly Ann), Moses Jacob
and Wassillie Chukanuk. There were others, whose names we
cannot recall at this time, who also provided the time and energy to
help us do a job that the contractor was afraid to tackle.
In closing,
it was a concerted effort by a few public minded individuals who donated
their resources to help make this telephone system a viable entity that
is owned by the very people it serves.
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