As part of their effort to highlight homegrown businesses in Emery County, the historical society welcomed Larry Adams to begin a presentation on the Emery County Farmers Union Telephone Association, Inc.
Adams began by explaining that in the 1940s, Castle Dale had their own telephone service locally, which stayed in business for several years until the association came. In 1945, only 32% of American farmers in rural areas had phone service and part of them did not work very well.
With assistance from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), the association was formed in 1950 as a result of many individuals that strived to make the area in which they lived both a better and safer place.
Keith Ware started working with the company in 1952 and acted as the general manager for nearly 40 years before he entered into retirement in late 1991.
Currently, Brock Johansen sits at the helm of what is now known as Emery Telcom. For 19 years Johansen, the present CEO, has worked to take the company further than ever before.
There has only ever been three general managers of the company in its entirety. The first was Ware, from 1950 to retirement, Greg Killpack from 1992 to 2005 and Johansen from 2005 to present. Johansen first spoke on the purchase of the Huntington Exchange, in which the community attended the public meeting in droves.
Johansen stated that the community spoke so poorly about The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company (Mountain Bell) that the company agreed to sell. Huntington was the first exchange ever sold by a Bell company.
From there, the Green River exchange was purchased in 1992 and the Carbon and Hanksville exchanges occurred in October of 1999.
The QCC Fiber Lease was executed in Sept. of 2006 and took a year to build. Final approval was in December of 2007 and it shifted three million a year of profit into ETV Fiber. This paid off the Carbon/Emery debt and allowed for the fiber into the premise.
Johansen continued the latter half of the association’s presentation with the purchase of the Precis Cable plants, as well as the purchase of the Sun Advocate and Emery Country Progress, which was absorbed into ETV News in late 2018.
To round out the presentation, Johansen looked to the future by showing those in attendance the current fiber map, as well as the Salt Lake builds.
