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Etex Telephone continues strong growth, members told


Etex Telephone Cooperative continues to be strong and financially healthy, and continues to grow and expand its services, the board president told members at the co-op’s annual meeting Tuesday evening.

“On April 12 the Cooperative mailed out $265,550 in Capital Credit checks,” said president Elwin Beavers. This capital credit was paid for the years 1987 through 1999. He said the board also approved giving away $20,000 for scholarships. These scholarships are awarded to students in the eight schools that are in or close to the cooperative’s service area.

“This last year, the employees of Etex cutover and completed seven new copper cable areas and five new fiber locations, making high speed internet and video available to an additional members and customers.

Beavers also said that Etex Telecom is in the middle of the fiber-to-the-home project in Gilmer.

“By the end of summer, our contractors should finish burying fiber to all homes in the Gilmer city limits and are currently finishing burying fiber in the south side of Holly Ranch Area,” he said. “Construction is continuing on the north side. Etex currently has more than 1,500 customers in Holly Lake and Gilmer.”

Etex Cellular has constructed a new site in Diana and it will be on the air by the end of this month, Beavers said. “Also, we completed the transition of bringing in-house the marketing, billing and the day-to-day management from Alltel,” he said. “This was a long and tedious process; we are still experiencing intermitent problems. However most of the major problems are over.

“Our internet company, Etex Dot Net, now has redundant routes to the internet,” Beavers said, commenting that this will continue to improve service.

He said they also have a new in-house spam and virus filter, which will speed up their email server and relieve unwanted spam from the network. It is available to all Etex internet customers at no charge.

He also said that he was excited to announce that ETEX is providing digital video services in select areas and currently has 264 video customers.

“I would also like to brag on our employees,” Beavers said. “They have worked 995 days without a lost-time accident. Prior to this, the record was 445 days without a lost-time accident.

“As of April 1, 2007, our employees have driven over 800,000 miles before last month where one of vehicles was involved in an accident. We have estimated that Etex has saved about $950,000 in last 10 years. They are also involved in their communities where they live as active members of their churches, civic clubs, chambers of commerce, school activities and participate in the county’s recycling program.

“On behalf of the board of directors, I want to thank the employees for striving to keep up with the changing technologies and providing our customers with cutting-edge service.”

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