Fourth Quarter, 1998
TORONTO - NATCO recently received national recognition when its newsletter, Natco News, was awarded a second place certificate of merit. A judge commented that the Natco News was a "very neighborly product" with good photos and informative articles. The newsletter is produced quarterly by Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing of Mountain Home. Sponsored by the OPASTCO Roundtable magazine, the Indy Awards honor excellence in independent telephone company communications efforts. Entries for the 1998 contest were accepted from independent telephone companies throughout the United States and Canada. The Indy Awards were presented July 27 at a ceremony in Toronto during the 35th Annual Summer Convention of the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO). OPASTCO is a Washington, D.C. - based trade association that represents nearly 500 small, independently owned, local telecommunications companies, serving primarily rural areas of the United States and Canada. Its member companies and cooperatives range in size from fewer than 100 to 50,000 access lines and serve more than 2.6 million customers. It represents rural telecommunications interests before federal regulatory bodies and provides educational programs and publications. The association also has an affiliate nonprofit foundation, the Fund for Rural Education and Development. |
South Shore Foundation Brings Internet Bull Shoals area residents will soon be able to use new computer hardware and software at the Bull Shoals Library and enjoy access to the Internet, thanks to a grant from South Shore Foundation, NATCO's charitable foundation. Bull Shoals Library Friends, Inc., a volunteer group that supports the library with fund-raising efforts and volunteer work, applied for and received the grant of $15,000. The group plans to raise approximately $7,000 to complete the purchase of needed computer equipment.
Dawn Reithel, president-elect of Bull Shoals Library Friends, said the board of directors was delighted with the grant. "With this grant, Bull Shoals Library Friends will meet our first two major goals in computerizing the library, having modern hardware and software, and a central record-keeping system. Next will be inter-library communication with the Marion County and North Arkansas Regional Library System." NATCO will provide a high-speed phone line for dual-mode access to the Internet, so library customers will be able to view or download high-quality graphics as well as text. Office personnel may use the computer and facsimile machine at the same time with the high-speed phone line. Equipment that will be purchased includes three computers, two for the public and one for the office personnel, two printers, one of which is a color printer, a scanner and computer workstations. Training for volunteers and installation support is also included. South Shore Foundation trustees required, in granting the funds, that if the library were ever to close, the equipment would be turned over to the main branch of the Marion County Library. South Shore Foundation provides funding in its service area along the south shore of Bull Shoals Lake to further goals of educational advancement, environmental preservation, and economic development. For more information or a grant application, call 1-870-453-3333. |
Omaha Volunteer Fire Department FLIPPIN - The Omaha Volunteer Fire Department has received a grant of $9,191 from the South Shore Foundation, the charitable foundation of Northern Arkansas Telephone Company, to help purchase equipment for the department's First Responders medical emergency team. The South Shore Foundation's board of trustees approved the grant at a recent meeting.
Among the planned uses for the grant is equipping the First Responders with an automatic external defibrillator (AED). This piece of equipment is used in some cases of cardiac arrest and is credited with increasing the survival rate of heart attack victims from less than 10 percent to 40 percent, according to Cathy Duggan, registered nurse with the department. Dr. Gordon Patterson, Medical Director of the Boone County First Responders, works with the department to ensure proper protocols and orders are followed. Additionally, grant funds will provide safety equipment of various types from protective masks and gloves for department members to sirens and red lights for the vehicles, as well as an inexpensive computer for maintaining records related to the AED usage. The Omaha Volunteer Fire Department is 100 percent volunteer, serving 1200 households primarily along 15 miles of Highway 65 from the Arkansas/Missouri state line to Highway 14 at Bear Creek in Boone County, covering almost 100 square miles. For South Shore Foundation information or grant applications, call 1-870-453-3333. |
Diamond
City Receives Grant from A grant made to Diamond City by the South Shore Foundation is expected to help the city grow. Mayor Wanda Riechers said the $6,250 grant from the South Shore Foundation, NATCO's charitable foundation, would allow the city to complete a Master Plan on how best to bring new water and sewer services to undeveloped lots in Diamond City.
"It is certainly vital to the further development of our city," the mayor told South Shore Foundation Board of Trustees Chairman Steven G. Sanders. The city is matching the grant to pay for a Master Water and Sewer Plan. Diamond City's current residents are provided adequate water and sewer services, but future development of the city's platted lots was to be studied with the funds granted. The Master Plan for the water distribution system recommends upgrading water line sizes to 4-inch minimums, adding 150,000 linear feet of water lines, a new 250,000 gallon water storage tank and development of a second water supply well or additional water source as a backup. The total estimated cost of water distribution extensions and improvements is $2.5 million. The Master Plan for improvements to the wastewater system recommends installation of a gravity sewer collection system with 157,000 linear feet of lines, manholes and 13 sewage lift stations for a total of $6.1 million. This project is divided into nine subareas which can be developed as needed. Diamond City is located on scenic Highway 7, 34 miles northwest of Flippin on a peninsula in Bull Shoals Lake, and 45 miles south of Branson, Mo. It was incorporated under the name Sugar Loaf, but the name was changed in 1966 to Diamond City. Its population is approximately 700. For South Shore Foundation information or grant applications, call 1-870-453-3333. |
A
Great Day for a Fishing Tournament The ghosts and goblins didn't have a chance to haunt White River on Halloween, because Flippin Chamber of Commerce fishing teams already had control of the stream - and with good results. Fifty-seven teams entered the tournament and spent a beautiful Saturday outwitting 84 pounds of trout.
The team of Bill Potter and Kelly Helms had a great day, landing the largest trout, a 12-pound brown in their total of 14.4 pounds. The prize trout was caught on a crawdad tail not far downstream from the R.M. Ruthven Bridge at Cotter. Rewards for the top team included $500 plus a pair of airline tickets. The angler with the biggest fish also won a $500 prize and a free mount by Treat Taxidermy. Runners-up and winners of special drawings for prizes ranging from depth finders to a 1999 model Supreme jon boat and TI trailer were: Charlie Willett, Gary Kimmel, Gene and Judy Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Polich, Maurice Halleck, Jerry Myers and Bob Leard.
Flippin Chamber of Commerce President Steven Sanders Jr. thanks all those who fished in the tournament and the staff members who worked to make the event a success. A hamburger and hot dog cookout at the Cotter Park Pavilion next to Big Spring ended a great day. |
Tony Pasqualini Joins NATCO
Pasqualini comes to NATCO from Anchorage Telephone Utilities at Anchorage, Alaska, where he was a switching engineer. Prior to the ATU position, he worked for Nortel Public Networks Europe at Maidenhead, United Kingdom, for more than two years. He also worked at U.S. Naval Communications Centers at London, at Antigua, West Indies, and Gaeta, Italy. Pasqualini served in the U.S. Navy from 1986 to 1995 and attained the rank of 1st Class Petty Officer. His training in Nortel switching equipment, which NATCO uses, is advantageous. NATCO President and General Manager Steve Sanders said, "Pasqualini is a welcome addition to the NATCO staff." He will be working with the technical team at NATCO as well as assisting in assuring quality of Internet services NATCO offers. In fact, Pasqualini became acquainted with the South Shore, Bull Shoals Lake, Arkansas, area through the Internet. A native of Chicago, Pasqualini graduated from Chicago's De La Salle High School. He and his wife, Sarah, originally from England, reside in Flippin with their three children, Josh, 10; Jessie, 4; and Joe, 3. |
Natco's Neighbors Network at Open House Did you feel like a winner September 24, 1998? If you came to the NATCO open house, there is a good chance you were one of the winners - with either savings on connection fees for telephone services, door prizes, or as a family member of our many school-age winners of the coloring and essay contests.
At NATCO's fifth annual open house, over 250 customers were able to browse through the many booths set up to show the modern telephone services available from your technology leaders - NATCO. Services such as cellular phones, Internet, ISDN video conferencing, Telcards, and the services NATCO customers now take into stride (but which are largely unavailable to many customers): selective call acceptance, selective call rejection, Fast-line (ISDN), caller name and number delivery, teen line, second line, call waiting, voice mail.
Customers saved connection and installation fees of $11 on call waiting, caller name and number ID, selective call acceptance and rejection, and teen line. They saved $25.20 on installation of an ISDN service.
Winners of special door prizes, and the prize they won are: Among the favorite events of the annual Open House is the awarding of prizes to students in the area for their study and demonstration of artistic and writing skills. NATCO awards prizes to kindergarten through fourth-grade students for drawing and coloring, and to fifth through eighth-grade students for writing skills. The drawing and coloring contest first-place winners received $25 gift certificates from Cherry Tree Bookstore in Mountain Home, and second place, third place and honorable mention winners received ribbons and certificates.
The drawing and coloring contest winners are:
We at NATCO are pleased to open our offices to our customers for our annual open house and happy to share the information you need to use modern telecommunications systems to make your life easier. Congratulations to all the winners and see you next year. |
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Telecommunications
"Okay" in the Ozarks Australian journalist Stewart Fist featured NATCO in a column he wrote about telephone companies for the newspaper named The Australian. The article came to us through e-mail to Steven Sanders, with Fist's request to check facts about NATCO. Fist, a technology writer, made a study of the price of telephone services in American telephone companies of different sizes. He told his Australian readers that the American telephone system is totally privatized, and he felt that although the USA has made many major mistakes in the split-up and redesign of its national telephone structure, "parts of it are very good." The writer briefly recounts the history of AT&T and its competition with GTE, then Fist discusses independent companies that were never acquired by either since they were thought to be "uneconomical." Fist's article speaks highly of NATCO. "The most interesting example I've found is one called NATCO which operates a rural service covering 1,600 square kilometers and six small towns in the Ozarks. The company services a regional population of 51,000 spread across three counties, and it has a total of 12,000 telephone lines. NATCO's problems seem roughly comparable to the Albury-Wodonga region in terms of area covered, town-size and population density. Given the range of coverage, you wouldn't expect cheap telephone access, but nor would it be grossly expensive by Australian standards." Fist lists NATCO monthly rates of $10.90 basic rate, with free local calls, "and their local call zones are quite substantial," he says; "$17.90 for ISDN, and $40 for the package which includes ISDN, local calls, and unlimited Internet access which isn't a bad deal by anyone's standards." Fist's figures show NATCO's ISDN rate lower than the cheapest ISDN rate from a major carrier (RBOC Bell South in Tennessee), $28.44/month and notes that other regional carriers charge from $40 to $160. Installation at NATCO is $25.20, compared to other charges up to $291.50. "In the wealthy strip down the northeast and east coast as far as Washington, Bell Atlantic provides the same flat-rate ISDN service at residential rates between $236 and $249, which is over 13 times NATCO's price. Fist concludes: The larger the company, the more costly the service. Quite often these vary over a range of 10 to one or more; urban users pay much higher prices than country users, the presence of wireless local loop and cable-telephony competition in urban areas has had very little moderating effect, and nothing influences pricing more than the local customers' income. Internet Users: Help is Easy as 1-2-3 As a service to our Internet customers, Natco Technologies offers the Internet Trouble-Reporting Desk, started earlier this summer. This article will review, step by step, how to use the system to receive answers from our technical analysts on problems that may occur as you begin Internet service with us. 1. If you should experience problems such as busy signals, lengthy delays, or disconnection, please call the Internet Trouble-Reporting Desk at 870-453-8822. This is a toll free call in the NATCO service area. The repair dispatcher who answers will ask you to describe the problem you have, in as much detail as possible. 2. The dispatcher may be able to help immediately. He or she will activate a repair ticket. If the dispatcher cannot help you, he or she will immediately issue the ticket and assignment to an Internet Technician, whose job it is to resolve your problem within 24 (weekday) hours. 3. The Internet Technician will review the problem and research it before they return your call. Someone will return your call. If you experience a problem during the evening or weekends, please call 870-453-8822 and leave a detailed message about the problem. With any other type of question or problem, please contact our Customer Service Department at 870-453-8800. NATCO continues to upgrade Internet services at every opportunity, including a recent upgrade to Cisco System equipment for Internet hardware and software and another expansion of bandwidth.
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Arkansas Telephone Company | 301 East Main Street | Flippin, Arkansas,
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11/06/2007 natc318s
Head librarian at the Bull Shoals Library Adrienne
Jasnich, seated, and president-elect of the Bull Shoals Library Friends, Dawn Reithel, are
ready to use new computer equipment funded with a $15,000 grant from the South Shore
Foundation, the charitable foundation of the Northern Arkansas Telephone Company. Using
the new equipment the public will have access to the Internet at the library.
Northern Arkansas Telephone Company announces the
employment of Anthony (Tony) Pasqualini at NATCO in the position of Network Services
Analyst. He is a U.S. Naval veteran with extensive training in communications and service
in Europe and the West Indies.
Essay winners received cash prizes of $75, $50, and $25. Winners are: