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Whidbey Telecom
Whidbey Telecom (formerly Whidbey Telephone Company and often called Whidbey Tel) is a private, independent telecommunications company operating on the South End of Whidbey Island in Washington State, the community of Point Roberts, Washington, and doing business as Hat Island Telephone Company on Hat (Gedney) Island. Whidbey Telecom is unusual because it is locally owned and has never been a part of a larger company. Whidbey Telecom is also unusual in that 100% of the lines it services are buried underground. The company attributes this action to highly reliable service in an area racked with storms that cause frequent power outages.
==History==
Whidbey Telephone was founded in 1908 by local business owners and farmers in Langley, Washington. They wanted to provide telephone service to the community but wanted to keep the ownership local to prevent an outside company from interfering in the affairs of the Whidbey Island community. All residents of South Whidbey had access to the Whidbey Telephone system by 1920. The company prospered, but after World War II an influx of new residents began to tax the small phone company. By 1950, the company began to make major upgrades to its network but began to lose money. A local business man David C. Henny, in 1953, purchased a controlling interest in Whidbey Telephone Company in order to prevent a sale to AT&T. Under his leadership, the company was able to restructure and become profitable again, all the while completing much needed upgrades to the infrastructure. The Henny family still controls the company.
Winters in Washington bring many storms, Whidbey Telephone had overhead wires, and when the storms came, the lines went down. After several winters, where more than 60% of their customers lost service, the company decided to bury its entire network. By 1961, 100% of its lines were buried, a first for local telephone companies. Since then there has yet to be a widespread service disruption due to infrastructure damage.
Whidbey Telephone became the first local phone company (west of the Rocky Mountains) to provide Internet access to its customers, in 1994. In 2000, while many phone companies were just beginning to offer DSL services, Whidbey began an aggressive campaign to provide the service to all of it customers. In just two years, the entire service area, including Point Roberts and Hat Island had DSL service available. For a few years, the company's Internet division, Whidbey.NET, even offered DSL to residents in Verizon territory on Whidbey Island. When Frontier took over the Verizon territory, they began an aggressive campaign to expand their services, and while they can't claim 100% availability in their territory, they have largely removed WhidbeyTel as competition.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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