Offer made to purchase TCT

If all goes according to plan, closing on the sale of TCT to Meeteetse/Burlington resident Neil Schlenker will be Dec. 21.

TCT Board of Director Chairman Dalin Winters announced this week that an offer to purchase Tri County Telephone Association, Inc., (TCT) was received by the board of directors.

According to Winters, the offer was received from Neil Schlenker, a member of the telecommunications cooperative from Meeteetse. Schlenker said he considers himself a cross-resident for both the Meeteetse and Burlington communities, living halfway between them.

Since receipt of the offer, an agreement has been negotiated and approved, and will now be subject to approval by the members of the TCT cooperative.

The proposed purchase, valued at approximately $51 million, will provide approximately $29 million to be distributed to members of the cooperative in addition to a maximum of $8 million for network enhancement providing fiber to, or close to, homes and businesses, state-of-the-art electronic equipment and high-speed broadband service including high quality Internet, voice, data and entertainment, according to a TCT press release.

Information packets were mailed last week to members, which include distribution details, a summary of the agreement, questions and answers pertaining to the transaction and a ballot to approve or disapprove the purchase.

In addition, open house/informational meetings will be held from 6-9 p.m. in Ten Sleep on Monday, Sept. 29, and in Burlington on Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Schlenker said he and several TCT employees will be in attendance to answer questions. People can bring their letters and talk one-on-one with someone.

The purchase

TCT Chief Executive Officer Chris Davidson said the meetings are being held in Ten Sleep and Meeteetse because that’s where the majority of the cooperative members reside. He said the original Tri County Telephone was Otto, Emblem, Burlington, Hyattville, Ten Sleep and the Hamilton Dome/Owl Creek area.

Wyoming statute requires essentially a 90-day time period from the time members are notified of a pending sale until a member meeting, so a meeting has been set for Dec. 20 in Basin at the TCT office to announce the results of the voting, which began once members received their packet.

If the members approve the sale, a Dec. 31 closing has been scheduled. The company has already filed proper notification with the Wyoming Public Service Commissioner and the Federal Communications Commission.

“We don’t anticipate any huge issues (from the PSC or FCC). We’re not being consolidated into a competitor that would change the competitive landscape. Contractually, (Schlenker) has agreed to hold the prices on services,” Davidson said.

If members vote not to approve the sale things will go on as normal.

Davidson said, “We never had a for sale sign up. He came with an unsolicited offer about a year ago.” He said they have been working since then to get to the point where they could bring the question to the members.

“We completed a tremendous amount of work,” Schlenker said, adding that he and TCT consulted lawyers, evaluators and consultants to make sure they understood the Wyoming statute in regard to cooperatives.

“I went in very informed, but I also got my eyes opened,” he said.

The vote

Both Davidson and Schlenker said they feel members will support the sale.

“In my honest opinion, most people had no clue they would be getting $25,000 or $30,000 (depending on term of membership),” Schlenker said.

He said some members have been concerned about the employees and wanting to make sure that their vote would not impact anyone’s job.

“We’re keeping everybody,” he said.

He said active members will be paid with the sale and inactive members back to 1999.

Davidson said Tri County Telephone, under the sale, will “become a normal company without being a cooperative.”

Potential new owner

Schlenker said no changes are planned if the sale is approved and goes through by the end of this year. “The employees will stay. Their benefits will stay intact. There will be no carcassing out the company,” he said.

He said all the offices will remain open, with the management headquarters continuing in Cody, and the main electronic equipment will continue to be housed at the Basin office.

“The growth plan is to use this as the base while we look to purchase other small rural telephone companies,” Schlenker said.

He said along with the employees, the company name, TCT, will remain the same and customers’ phone numbers will remain the same.

Schlenker said he has been fielding a lot of calls from customers as they have received their packets. They are wondering about losing local control. He said while they won’t “have a board member,” he noted he could easily have been a board member. He said his family has been in the area since the 1880s and that’s not going to change.

They will continue to have meetings in Burlington and Ten Sleep for former cooperative members.

If the sale goes through the cooperative members will receive a payment for their membership with Schlenker in essence purchasing their membership. He said for some longtime members they will receive a check for $25,000 or even up to $30,000.

Services

Schlenker said all services will remain. “The future is really bandwidth. People use bandwidth differently,” he said noting it’s not just for talking on the phone anymore but rather watching movies, home security and more. He said the Internet and finding more uses for bandwidth will be the future of the services offered, but rest assured, talk services will continue.

“There’s a tremendous amount of small rural phone companies in the United States, more than probably should be or can exist in the future,” he said, adding that he’ll be looking at companies in Colorado, Nebraska and Idaho. “I want the home base being right here,” he said.

History

According to the TCT website, “Tri County Telephone Association, Inc. was formed in 1953 to provide local telephone service to rural Big Horn Basin customers in Burlington, Otto, Emblem, Ten Sleep, Hyattville, and Hamilton Dome. Telephone service became a reality in 1956 when the first dial tone was made available to these areas. Tri County is a rural cooperative made up of 4 exchanges: Ten Sleep (366); Hyattville (469); Burlington (Otto/Emblem ? 762); and Hamilton Dome (867). These local exchanges include approximately 1,000 access lines.

“In October of 1994, Tri- County Telephone purchased seven telephone exchanges from US West resulting in a 700 percent increase in access lines over night. From that purchase, TCT WEST, INC., which is a subsidiary of Tri County Telephone, was formed to serve the exchanges of Basin/Manderson (568), Frannie (664/764), Greybull/Shell (765), Lovell/Byron/Cowley (548/484) and Meeteetse (868). There are close to 5,000 access lines in these serving areas.”

By KARLA POMEROY