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BROADBAND COMMUNITIES
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www.broadbandcommunities.com
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
FTTH DEPLOYMENT
Q&A; With Ralph Cunha and Dennis Johnson,
Endeavor Communications
Small-Town Telco Thinks Big
A small telephone cooperative in Indiana provides a range of innovative services to
its members.
C
lay County Rural Telephone
Cooperative Inc., doing business as
Endeavor Communications, serves
about 9,000 members in 500-plus square miles
of south-central Indiana. Te cooperative,
formed in 1950, comprises nine local exchanges
that were started independently around the turn
of the 20th century. But Endeavor, though a
small company that serves small towns and rural
areas, thinks very big – that's why most of its
members have access to better and more varied
telecom services than their urban neighbors.
Recently,
BroadBand Communities had
the opportunity to speak with Ralph Cunha,
Endeavor's president and chief executive ofcer,
and Dennis Johnson, its director of network
operations. Following are highlights of that
conversation.
BroadBand Communities : Why did you decide to
build fber to the home in your service area?
Ralph Cunha: In the early 2000s, we began
exploring how we could upgrade our long
copper loops. By 2004, when we were
ready to start, new technology had become
available, and we decided to make the
investment in fber to the home. Te board
made the decision that, no matter where
members were living, they would get fber
to the home. So we started in one exchange,
and by this time next year, we will have
overbuilt everything.
Learn more about
new services for
FTTH networks at the
BroadBand Communities
summit, April 14–16.
Ralph Cunha, Endeavor CEO and president