Competition in the Local Telephone Market Starts August 3.NICOLLET, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 1998--August 3 marks a historic event in Minnesota. Crystal Communications of Mankato, Minnesota “Mankato” redirects here. For other uses, see Mankato (disambiguation). Mankato is a city in Blue Earth County¹, Minnesota with a population of 32,427 as of the 2000 census². started delivering competitive local telephone service to the residents of Nicollet. Crystal is the first facilities based Competitive Local Exchange Carrier to offer service in Minnesota under the Telecommunications Act There are several laws named the Telecommunications Act
Driven by a desire for local calling to near-by Mankato, the residents of Nicollet contacted Crystal Communications to help them out. A survey to determine the interest of the local residents in having a choice of local telephone service providers resulted in 86% saying YES! Crystal Communications installed a local loop, essentially overbuilding US West's facilities. Crystal offers all of the high-tech services currently available in the industry, but sometimes not available in rural communities. The city of Nicollet may exercise an option to own the new local loop after Crystal has attained a certain established thresholdof telephonecustomers over a number of years. The first customer to have telephone service activated, Carrie Huffer was a member of the committee that was exploring ways to provide local calling options to Mankato. A small ceremony was held at Ms. Huffer's home recognizing the first telephone call made on Crystal Communications' equipment. "This is the first facilities based competitive local exchange (CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) An organization offering local telephone service that is not one of the traditional telephone companies. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed competition to the incumbent telcos (ILECs), enabling new companies (CLECs) ) service in rural Minnesota. We are very excited to be the first company to offer customers a choice," said Ernie Lombard, President of Crystal Communications. Crystal Communications is a subsidiary of Hickory Tech Corporation (HTC HTC HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) Component HTC High Tech Computer Corp (Taiwan, China) HTC Hennepin Technical College (Minnesota) HTC High-Throughput Computing ) of Mankato, Minnesota. HTC is a diversified communications holding company in its 100th year of operations with its roots in the local telephone exchange business. From this base, it has expanded into billing and data processing data processing or information processing, operations (e.g., handling, merging, sorting, and computing) performed upon data in accordance with strictly defined procedures, such as recording and summarizing the financial transactions of a and communications products and services, including wireless, Internet, wireline and long-distance. For the year 1997, HTC had $76 million in revenues with operations in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas. The NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on symbol is HTCO HTCO High Temperature Catalytic Oxidation . The Internet home page address is: http://www.hickorytech.com
CONTACT: Hickory Tech
Jane Rush
Director of Public Affairs
507-387-1866
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