Prairie-Home Connection

As I turned my vehicle around, I realized that this truck was really smoking, and we needed the fire department ....

My wife was in labor when the first snow storm hit. The worst part is we live 40 miles from town ....

I was thinking, "Dear God, don't let those babies go out the window where they'll get rolled over ...."

Although wireless phones may be the latest "in" thing for much of the world, on the vast prairie of eastern Montana, trendy doesn't count for much. For the Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative (MRTC) customers quoted above, all these stories had happy endings, in part because of their cellular phones.

"Most of our customers buy cellular for safety and security, according to any survey we've done," said Gerry Anderson, MRTC general manager. Today MRTC has about 2,000 cellular customers, and the business is a break-even proposition.

"Our primary motivation -- though we'd like to make money -- is to provide this service to our people who are landlocked and need this for safety and business reasons," Anderson said. "This is a service they couldn't get any way except through their co-op."

He said there are two reasons for forming a cooperative: You don't have service, or you can't get it on an affordable basis.

"Both those circumstances were here in 1952," Anderson said. "US West would not serve these areas, or if they would serve them, the cost was out of sight." So MRTC came into being.

A cooperative's customers own it. They elect the board of trustees, which oversees operations. Money that is not reinvested in the cooperative is returned to the members in capital-credit checks.

MRTC is the largest land-mass telephone cooperative in the continental United States, serving a 30,000-square-mile area. It operates 13,000 access lines; 10,000 are residential. It also has 1,200 miles of fiber. Services include Internet access, cable television, long distance and cellular -- analog cellular.

MRTC participated in the lottery when the first cellular licenses were awarded. It joined with other companies, giving control of the system to CommNet Cellular.

"We got in it hoping our service area would be serviced," Anderson said. "This didn't happen. They were more concerned with the revenue-producing parts along the interstate."

FILL-IN LICENSES MRTC sold its shares in CommNet and, when five years had passed, applied for the fill-in licenses in its areas that hadn't been built out. Today there are nine cell sites.

"Candidly, the reason we're able to keep our heads above water is the one site in Baker, which is oil-field country," Anderson admitted. "That's where we make the money, and that's the only place we have any competition," he said.

MRTC participated in the PCS auction with three other companies, and they hold F-block licenses for most of Montana. MRTC may complement its cellular licenses with PCS in some of the area's larger towns.

MRTC obtained the LMDS license for Bozeman, MT, because it was the one it could afford, Anderson said. MRTC now is looking for FCC approval to trade that license to Montana Power for some LMDS license rights in eastern Montana.

Plans call for using LMDS in the CLEC business; MRTC is competing with US West in larger area towns such as Glendive and Sidney, both with populations around 5,000. Bill Wade, assistant manager, expressed his frustration that the LMDS equipment available today is aimed more at serving business customers than residential.

NOT FORGOTTEN When MRTC started competing with US West as a CLEC, its original members in the rural areas were concerned that they might be forgotten. Anderson explained that one reason for serving the larger towns was to expand the cooperative's membership so that its more rural members won't have to face increased rates.

"You don't separate the cooperative from the people we serve," he said."I believe that if they have tough times, we'll have tough times, too. And they're having tough times right now."

Actually tough times are a tradition on the Montana plains. So are tough people.

About 12 years ago, around the time Anderson became MRTC general manager, Frank and Deborah Popper, Rutgers University researchers, proposed that areas of the Plains states, including eastern Montana, be turned into a huge buffalo commons. They said that Plains farm, ranch, energy and minerals economies were in depression or near depression. They claimed the people in these areas survived mostly through government subsidy, and it would be better to relocate them.

The "buffalo commons" still has its proponents, but probably not in eastern Montana. The Poppers learned this when they held some town meetings to explain the concept.

"They were lucky to get out of certain towns alive," Anderson said. "Jordan over there has a reputation as sort of a shoot 'em up town, and I remember they presented over there. (Jordan made the news in 1996 with the FBI-Montana Freemen standoff at a ranch outside the town.) They didn't make much headway in the communities.

"Most of the people in this area would be somewhat anti-government to some extent," Anderson continued. "Not to the extent of printing bogus money and shooting government agents. But they like less government interference. This is Old-West-type territory. People had to be independent to make it out here, and that is still the feeling."

It's certainly the feeling you get from Rob Reukauf, current MRTC board president and 12-year trustee. Reukauf's 11,000-acre ranch is more than a 30-mile drive from the closest town, Terry, and about 22 of those miles are on unpaved road. His grandparents settled the land just after the turn of the century, but the U.S. Postal Service still refuses to deliver mail out there. So the Reukaufs use e-mail and faxes instead. They've had telephone service since 1968 when they got together with some neighbors and strung their own lines some 50 miles, bolting them to power poles. MRTC provided an engineer and the materials. When the Yellowstone River proved an obstacle, a neighbor flew the wire across. They started with party lines, but have single-party service today. Still, you have to drive about three miles from home before the cell phone kicks in.

COMPETITION EVERYWHERE? It's not surprising that Anderson, Reukauf and others believe a telephone cooperative works best for them. And although in the larger towns, MRTC is providing a competitive alternative, Anderson doesn't think competition is the answer everywhere.

"Is competition really good 40 miles north of Circle ?" Anderson questioned. "Rules are being set where someone may come in and get my Universal Service subsidy for providing a lesser grade of service at a lower price. They're saying competition is good all over, and I'm saying -- not really."

He pointed out that the public policy is still universal service: People have the right to adequate telephone service at reasonable rates no matter where they are in the United States.

"The rub becomes the definition of telecommunications service," Anderson said. "In 1934, it was 10-party service that may not work. Now it's 1-party, custom calling. Two years from now it may be high-speed Internet." Companies such as MRTC have a tough time deciding what to buy and when to buy.

"We're not an AT&T or a US West," he said. "We don't have unlimited resources."

But that's not the only thing that separates rural cooperatives from the large companies. At MRTC, Anderson's relationship with his customers is a personal one. When he took the job, there were some operational problems.

"We've worked on them, so there's less reason to call me at home," Anderson said.

Each week he takes 10 trouble tickets and calls the customers to make sure the problems were solved to their satisfaction.

MRTC holds customer-appreciation days, and it sets up booths at the county fairs to stay in contact with its customers. Its annual used-vehicle auction is a social event, and it's opening new offices closer to its customers.

Anderson speaks highly of his 9-person board, elected by the customers.

"They're younger than most boards -- contemporary in their thinking, which is a real plus in this era of change," he said.

At the board's suggestion, this past summer Anderson hired staff to assist local communities with economic-development issues, grant writing and exploring funding sources.

Is this the role of a telecommunications company?

"These are our communities," Anderson said.