WCCTA Office in Gowrie, IA
" So families like the Farnham's can have access to the same service regardless if they are working in town or miles out into the country." adds Marcie, WCCTA Office Manager.
Gowrie, IA (PRWEB) March 03, 2015
Fiber to the Home is a network that was built by Webster-Calhoun Cooperative Telephone Association (WCCTA) and is featured in the Farm to Family weekly segment on Channel 5 WOI-TV.
Over the past ten years, WCCTA invested more than $20 million to lay fiber in the ground throughout their 16 exchanges. This process also included adding Calix technology in all their exchanges and upgrading to the E7 platform in five of the exchanges in December, 2014. The same technology is what was showcased by President Obama during his visit to Cedar Falls, Iowa last year with his promotion of increasing broadband services in the United States.
"The hard part is done and the Fiber is in the ground to every home. Now we can focus on continually upgrading the equipment on each end of the fiber. In some cases, it may be as easy as switching out an electronic "card" at the customer location," says Marcie Boerner, Office Manager at WCCTA.
In the WOI-TV Farm to Family segment hosted by Channel 5's Claire Powell, WCCTA Fiber to the Home network features the Trent and Marsha Farnham family. Marsha owns Farm and Town insurance. The internet service is a critical part Marsha’s daily activity to provide insurance coverage to her clients. On the family farm, Trent uses broadband to order seed corn, check grain prices, research and learn about new farming techniques and communicating. Trent says that before the internet it was very difficult to communicate many times with individuals that he needed information from and required a lot of time on the phone.
Today WCCTA continues to improve the network and can provide 1 GIG service to many of their customers in the E7 exchanges. This is the same service level that Cedar Falls provides and has made them one of the Top 10 Best Cities to Work From Home.
What makes WCCTA different than Cedar Falls, IA? The rural landscape. "Our service area covers 715 square miles of rural Iowa so we average about three customers per mile. So families like the Farnham's can have access to the same service regardless if they are working in town or miles out into the country." adds Marcie.
Webster-Calhoun Cooperative Telephone Association is located at 1106 Beek Street, Gowrie, IA 50543. It has a Fiber driven network and provides landline telephone, Internet and digital television service to the Iowa communities of Gowrie, Pilot Mound, Vincent, Thor, Churdan, Knierim, Somers, Barnum, Duncombe, Farnhamville, Badger, Clare, Moorland, Boxholm, Lanyon and Paton. Additional information is available by calling 515-352-3151 or visiting http://www.wccta.net.
