TDS Telecommunications LLC and the Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association have entered into a stock purchase agreement under which ownership of the Strasburg Telephone Company will move from TDS to Eastern Slope.
“As the local Cooperative broadband service provider in surrounding areas, this purchase allows us to expand our reach into the Strasburg community and provide the same excellent service that we provide to our current members,” Eastern Slope CEO Bradley Welp said in a press release about the TDS deal.
“As a leader in telecommunications and connectivity solutions, we are excited for the opportunity to improve broadband services for our neighbors in the Strasburg area, expanding opportunities for education, healthcare, remote work compatibility, entertainment, e-commerce, and business operations.”
The Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association has existed for more than 70 years and serves the eastern Colorado communities of Arriba, Bennett, Eads, Flagler, Genoa, Haswell, Hugo, Karval, Kit Carson, and Woodrow.
The press release included no information on the purchase price or when the transaction between TDS and Eastern Slope is expected to close.
The sale to Eastern Slope is the second system sale for TDS Telecom this spring. In early March, RiverStreet said that it had acquired two North Carolina telecom providers — New Castle Telephone Company and Amelia Telephone Corp. — from TDS.
It’s not all selling for TDS. Last week, the company announced that it had broken ground on a fiber-optic infrastructure project to connect more than 1,200 businesses and homes in rural Grant County, Wisconsin, addresses.
The deployments are aimed at residential and business customers in the area, including locations in the townships of Beetown, Ellenboro, Harrison, Lancaster, North and South Lancaster, Liberty, Little Grant, Potosi, and Waterloo. The project will provide the address with internet speeds as fast as 1 Gig — with some locations having access to up to 8 Gig.
