main office in amherst industry telecommunications founded 1903 113 years ago 1903 in amherst wisconsin wisconsin united states products fiber optic communication hdtv internet service provider telephone website www.wi net.com amherst telephone company also known as tomorrow valley communications is a provider of internet telephone and television in portage county wisconsin united states . for over 100 years it has been a part of this small midwestern community . history edit amherst telephone company was incorporated on july 3 1903 . capital to form the new company was provided by 62 area residents who pledged 25 each to buy a share of stock . c. j. iverson was selected as the first president . an old gray mare named may was a pioneer partner of the amherst telephone company . she transported poles materials and linesmen from 1903 though 1929 . may was known to the whole community and many local youth had fun riding her carriage to social gatherings . a car was hired to help her in 1920 but she still was often needed due to the poor roads which were piled high with snow in the winter . in 1907 a connection was made with the bell system . in 1908 90.5 miles 145.6 km of line were laid 233 telephones distributed and 200 shares bought . the line was built to custer and polonia and a switchboard was installed in the lukasavitz home . in 1925 amherst telephone purchased the nelsonville and rosholt exchanges with 400 subscribers . this almost doubled the number of telephones . in 1930 the great depression arrived . during the next couple years the company lost half of its subscribers due in large part to economic hardships . in 1935 the custer exchange closed . in 1955 a new building was constructed for the automatic switchboard that was purchased for rosholt . in 1957 c. o. iverson died and c. o. iverson jr. joined the workforce . there were 1 000 subscribers by the end of the decade . in the 1960s new buildings were constructed in amherst polonia and nelsonville . new dial switchboards were purchased for amherst rosholt polonia and nelsonville . in the 1980s the nelsonville exchange was eliminated and new additions were added to the amherst building . 90 % of the lines were buried . a new cable television was formed . there are around 3 000 access lines by mid decade . in 1999 fire hit the main amherst telephone office in amherst . the disaster knocked out only 20 % of customers due to a backup system . in 2015 amherst telephone company continues to expand its fiber to home service in neighboring communities adding 100s of homes to the service area every year through expansion into the under served countryside . since its founding amherst telephone company has continuously changed with the times . they have buried their lines for less storm damage and more reliability . they have grown from party lines to private service analog service to digital service and now from copper wire to fiber optic cable . they partner with win wisconsin independent network the largest wisconsin based fiber optic transport network in the state . additional partners airstream and midwest video solutions help provide for high bandwidth high speed video and data capabilities . references edit retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title amherst telephone company & oldid 722202458 categories portage county wisconsincompanies based in wisconsinhidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parameters navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 26 may 2016 at 16 08 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view