Today Red River Rural Telephone Association boasts nearly 4,500 customers. It also provides long distance, cellular, Internet, voice mail, and many other calling features to enhance your basic telephone service.

    The Bell companies and other large telephone companies served urban areas, but most were not interested in providing telephone service to rural areas without charging expensive line-extension fees. In 1949, the Telephone Amendment to the Rural Electrification Act (REA) made loan funds available to finance rural telephone systems. (The REA became the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) in 1994.)

    In 1951, area residents from rural Barnesville, Rothsay, and Kent, MN, banded together and organized a cooperative, known as Barnesville Rural Telephone Association to provide telephone service to their rural area. The Cooperative was incorporated with the principal place of business located at Barnesville, MN.

• open membership Anyone who can use the cooperative's services and will accept membership responsibilities is eligible to join.

• one member, one vote Power is shared equally. 

• limited return on investment The primary purpose is to provide service to it's members.

• surplus is allocated to the members Margins above operating expenses are allocated to members according to their patronage. Margins are used for capital investment until such time as the Cooperative's financial condition allows the Board of Directors to distribute some of the past years allocations.

    Fifty-one members attended the first Annual Meeting in 1952 and elected nine directors to represent their interests in the Cooperative.

    The original area served by the Cooperative was in a triangular shape, from southwest of Barnesville and west of Rothsay to the Kent area. Over 90% of the residents in this area signed up for telephone service.

    Later that year, the goal of the first membership drive was to obtain 100 memberships sold at $50 each. These funds were applied toward the equity required for an REA loan. The first REA loan for $517,000 was secured in 1953.

    Supported by REA funds, the Barnesville Rural Telephone Association purchased and upgraded the Abercrombie, Colfax, and Mooreton Exchanges in North Dakota, and Kent and Rollag Exchanges in Minnesota.

    After the Abercrombie Telephone company was purchased, the Cooperative reached southeast of Kent to pick up three subscriber lines, all in an effort to hold the line against the Nortwestern Bell-Brushvale invasion.

    Omer Stowman, who was the owner of the Rothsay Telephone Company, was hired as the first manager of Barnesville Rural Telephone Association in 1953.

    When the Cooperative purchased the Abercrombie Exchange, it also acquired a large building in town. Since the young company had lost it's option to purchase property and provide service in the Rothsay area, the Cooperative moved it's headquarters to Abercrombie in 1956.

    Although the move was intended to be temporary, the headquarters has remained there since. The Cooperative remodeled an ex-mortuary, the drugstore, and most recently the former grocery store, to accommodate the current office.

    With subscribers now in both Minnesota and North Dakota, the Cooperative changed its name to Red River Rural Telephone Association (RRRTA) in 1957. And although RRRTA's business office is located in North Dakota, it remains a Minnesota corporation and files taxes as a Foreign Cooperative in North Dakota.

    The last major telephone company purchased was Great Bend, ND, in 1965. This area was immediately converted from overhead (aerial) lines to buried cable and to one party service. Great Bend has the distinction of being the first exchange in North Dakota to have all buried lines with one party service.

    All RRRTA exchanges were upgraded to buried cable facilities by 1972. Maintaining and periodically replacing buried cable remains a constant responsibility of RRRTA's outside employees.

    Until 1977, telephone bills were written by hand or by typewriter. Automated billing was introduced when Midwest data service of Clara City, MN, began preparing the monthly telephone bills. 

    Olsen Thielen and Co., Ltd. began conducting financial audits for the Cooperative in 1978. The accounting and auditing duties were impacted greatly by the deregulation of customer-premise equipment (CPE) in 1987.

    Deregulation separated the actual telephone equipment (or CPE) from the telephone service provided by the Cooperative. Equipment was now considered a separate service from local or long distance telephone service. Equipment had to be sold or leased to the customer. Telephone service itself continues to be regulated by each state's public utilities commission and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

    Analog telephone switching was replaced by digital switching in 1989. A digital switch is a large computer, which converts a voice (or analog signal) to digital computer language. It then transmits this language through the switch to the telephone number you dialed, and then converts the signal back to voice (analog) to complete your telephone call.

    Digital switching made touchtone service available, but other than telephone calls connecting faster, the change was basically transparent to subscribers.

    With digital switching, subscribers were introduced to a variety of calling features such as Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Speed Dial, etc.

    As the company grew, so did their need for additional space. The former Haarstead Bros. automotive showroom building in Abercrombie was purchased in 1991 as a garage for service vehicles.

    The first capital credit checks totaling $109,947.85 were written in 1991. These capital credits were net margins the company had earned during the years 1960 to 1974 and reinvested in the Cooperative. Now RRRTA was financially able to refund these dividends to the members who had telephone service during those years.

    In 1988, RRRTA, along with 5 other telephone companies, became equal partners in the VAL-ED Joint Venture. This venture provided interactive TV service to Red River Valley and lakes area school districts in Minnesota. Within a year, 17 school districts were using interactive TV to enhance their classes.

    A new type of mobile telephone service, known as cellular, was on the horizon in 1988. The Cooperative invested in three cellular communications partnership - Rural Service Area (RSA) 3 which covered the Red River Valley in North Dakota, RSA 5 that covered Wilkin County and the surrounding area in Minnesota, and the Metropolitan Service Area of Fargo-Moorhead and Grand Forks that was later sold.

    Cellular service gained popularity in the 1990s and eventually replaced a traditional mobile service. Today, RSA 3 cellular service is known as Verizon and RSA 5 cellular service is known as Cellular 2000. The Cooperative is a sales agent for both companies.

    The Cooperative's staff underwent a major change in 1990 when three longtime employees retired. They were Manager Wayne Holmquist Sr., Office Manager Duane Knudsen, and Chief Clerk Iola Herrick. Ardon M. Doran, one of the Cooperative's employees for the previous 15 years and then switch technician, became the new General Manager.

    The Cooperative's involvement in interactive TV spread across the river in 1991 when it entered into a contract with US West to provide this service to Richland High School in Colfax, ND.

    RRRTA became the first company in North Dakota to offer 2-PIC (prescribed interexchange carrier) equal access; meaning subscribers chose both their inter-LATA and their intra-LATA long distance carriers. The conversion to equal access was completed for both Minnesota and North Dakota subscribers in the spring of 1992. Today, the Cooperative’s subscribers may choose from over 30 long distance companies.

    MEANS expanded its services beyond equal access and today, under the name Onvoy, also provides operator services, after hours repair service, and a long distance program for the Cooperative.

    Red River Rural Telephone Association, along with hundreds of other rural electric and telephone companies, joined the National Rural Telephone Cooperative (NRTC) in order to bring small-dish satellite TV service to rural America. RRRTA purchased the satellite TV franchises in a majority of their telephone service area in 1992 and 1993.

    As a result of the list of ventures and investments continuing to grow, John G. Kinnard & Co., St. Cloud, MN, was selected as the financial and investment advisor for the Cooperative.

    The second capital credits redemption, totaling $176,937.25, was distributed in 1993 to the Cooperative’s members for capital credits earned from 1975 to 1978.

      A new service bureau, North Central Data Cooperative, in Mandan, ND, began preparing the monthly telephone bills in 1993. The new computer software was not compatible with the old software so, that summer, each customer account was entered manually into the new software. This past year NCDC merged with another cooperative and is now National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC).

counties the franchise covered – Clay, Richland and Wilkin.

    In 1995, a second subsidiary, Red River Fiber, Inc. was formed to administer the Cooperative's portion of the highest capacity data ring networks in Minnesota and North Dakota. The subsidiary's name was updated to Red River Technologies, Inc. in 1999 to reflect a wider range of telecommunications services such as E-911 administration.

    By the early 1990s, the growing demand for telephone numbers had changed the dialing pattern for long distance calls. Placing a long distance call meant dialing 10 digits (1 + area code + phone number), regardless of where you called.

    Touchtone service was no longer a luxury, but it was now the norm, and the Cooperative no longer charged for it.

    The demand for second lines to residences increased greatly during this time, mainly due to Internet usage.

    In 1996, Red River Rural Telephone Association purchased two North Dakota telephone exchanges from US West. A third subsidiary, Red River Telecom, Inc., was formed to provide telephone service to the Hankinson and Lidgerwood exchanges.  In 2002, Red River Telephone expanded its Red River Telecom subsidiary again, purchasing the Fairmount and Wyndmere, North Dakota exchanges from Citizens Telephone.

    The goal of the FCC's Telecommunications Act of 1996 was to introduce competition for local telephone service. This act was based on the theory that competition reduces rates and increases service. Certain safeguards existed to protect rural services areas that would not support competition. A flurry of new companies known as CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) sprang up in the industry as a result of this telecommunications act.

    Red River Rural Telephone Association became involved in the long distance market in 1997 with a "doing business as" program offered through Onvoy. The Cooperative and their subsidiary Red River Telecom, Inc. Market Onvoy's long distance service under the name Red River Long Distance. The long distance program is available to Red River Rural Telephone Association and it's subsidiary's subscribers only.

    The third capital credits redemption, totaling $136,608.00, was distributed in 1999 to the Cooperative's members for capital credits earned from 1979 to 1982.

    Red River Rural Telephone Association undertook a new interactive TV project in 2000. Working with Dickey Rural Telephone Cooperative in Ellendale, ND, RRRTA connected 13 schools in southeastern North Dakota to a digital interactive TV system.

    In the fall of 2000, after six years of business and building a customer base of 1,600, the Cooperative's subsidiary CRW Communications, Inc. sold it's satellite TV franchise.

    In December, 2005, Red River Telecom was liquidated, bringing all the patrons and assets of that company into the parent company, Red River Rural Telephone Association.  By operating as one company, the cooperative will achieve many efficiencies that will strengthen the cooperative.

    But the principles of which the Cooperative was founded remain the same as in 1951. It continues to provide dependable communications services to all members at the lowest possible cost.

    Red River Rural Telephone Association's growth and diversification over the past 53 years will enable it not only to survive, but also to thrive, in the future.