The Town Business

The citizens of Albany, MN, like so many of their counterparts in rural communities throughout the United States, have always understood that their long-term prosperity depends in part on having access to telecommunications services. It was that knowledge which prompted them in 1951 to band together to establish the Albany Mutual Telephone Cooperative, at a time when “telecommunications services” meant plain old telephone service delivered over twisted-pair copper lines.

More than half a century later, people in both rural and urban areas increasingly depend on what now are called “advanced telecommunications services,” which include all-digital TV offerings such as IPTV, high-definition TV (HDTV) and video on demand (VoD), as well as high-speed Internet access and, of course, basic voice service. Not surprisingly, Albany Tel, in keeping with its original mission, is gearing up to deliver those services, too. Located in central Minnesota, Albany has about 1,800 residents and comprises one of three exchanges operated by Albany Tel; the other two are in the nearby towns of Freeport and New Munich. Linked by a fiberoptic ring and a 250-mile toll network, the three exchanges together serve about 3,800 access lines. The vast majority of Albany Tel’s access lines consist of relatively new copper, with some segments only 20 years old and others deployed as recently as 2003. However, even when combined with ADSL2+ access technology, copper can deliver best case speeds of only 20 Mbps, which is also distance sensitive and obviously not enough to support bandwidth-intensive video and advanced  data services. That limitation, plus the likelihood that a cable-TV competitor would begin offering triple-play video, data and voice services, prompted

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