History & Mission
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Five small companies in Hancock County joined together in November 1950 to form the Hancock Rural Telephone Corporation – the McCordsville Telephone Company, the Maxwell Telephone Company, the Mohawk Telephone Company, the New Eden Telephone Company and the Willow Branch Telephone Company.
The McCordsville Company was founded in 1895 by Loren Helms, a telephone factory worker, when he strung a wire across a back fence from his mother’s house to the home of his sister, Mrs. Charles Peal, and installed the first telephone in the community. Soon three neighbors joined the line Hiram Dunham, James Thomas, and Robert Wilson – and the company was in business.
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The other four companies were established between 1900 and 1903. Each started as a community venture with 12 to 25 lines. Originally called the Eden Telephone Company, the exchange in that community was renamed the New Eden Telephone Company about 1940.
In 1952, a loan from the Rural Electrification Administration was approved, and by the spring of 1953, the exchanges of the corporation were consolidated into four dial offices – Maxwell, McCordsville, Mohawk, and Willow Branch – serving about 550 patrons.
Dial telephone service to all Hancock’s customers was established in 1966. In 1967, a new central office building was built in McCordsville and new dial equipment was cut into service with all one-party service, direct distance dialing, automatic number identification and extended area service into the Indianapolis metro area.
In October 1965, the company expanded its operations beyond the boundaries of Hancock County and fringes of other surrounding counties by purchasing the Markleville Telephone Company located in neighboring Madison County and installing dial service with direct distance dialing, automatic number identification, and extended area service with the surrounding exchanges.
On February 1, 1967, Hancock Rural purchased the Cadiz Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. located in Henry County. In 1970, Maxwell, Mohawk and Willow Branch were consolidated into a new office at Maxwell with all one-party service, direct distance dialing, automatic number identification, and extended area service into the Indianapolis metro area. The Maxwell offices serve as headquarters for all Hancock’s customer, plant and engineering operations.
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On July 1, 1979, Hancock purchased the Sulphur Springs Telephone Company and has since combined Markleville, Cadiz and Sulphur Springs into a new switching system which is all one-party, completely digital with a host switch at Markleville and remotes at Cadiz and Sulphur Springs.
On June 1, 1999, Hancock Rural Telephone Corp began doing business as Hancock Telecom to better reflect the full line of telecommunication services it offered.
As of September 30, 2006, Hancock Telecom served over 8,200 access lines in Hancock, Henry, Madison, Marion and Hamilton Counties with exchanges at Maxwell, Markleville, and McCordsville. Additionally, Hancock Communications, Inc. (described below) served over 1,800 access lines in the communities it serves.
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In 1983 Hancock Rural Telephone Corporation formed a partnership with Hancock County Rural Electric Membership Corporation to establish Central Indiana Communications, Inc., a company whose purpose it was to provide cable television service to unserved areas of Hancock County. The cable TV business was eventually sold to what is now Insight Communications and Hancock Rural Telephone Corporation acquired Hancock County REMC’s 50% interest in Central Indiana Communications, Inc. Now a wholly owned subsidiary, Central Indiana Communications, Inc. purchased a DBS area franchise in 1992 and began offering satellite television services to a large portion of east central Indiana. The DBS franchise was eventually sold to Pegasus in 1999.
Central Indiana Communications, Inc. currently acts as the holding company for all of Hancock’s unregulated lines of business which includes digital IP video, cellular partnerships, long distance, Internet services (including DSL), key systems, real estate, leasing and voicemail. Central Indiana Communications, Inc. also owns Hancock Communications, Inc., a company established to offer competitive local communications services, including telephone, long distance and broadband. Hancock Communications, Inc. was the first competitive local exchange carrier licensed by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in 1995 and currently offers local service in Greenfield, Shirley, Wilkinson, Fortville, Knightstown and the Mt. Comfort area. It also has fiber optic facilities in Knightstown, Pendleton and Morristown. CICI also has invested in joint ventures with other independent telco’s in Indiana to increase the number of services available to Hancock’s customers as well as increase efficiencies through economies of scale. These ventures include:
Indiana Fiber Network: Hancock Telecom helped establish a state-wide fiber optic network that is owned by independent telephone companies. Currently, 20 companies own the most comprehensive DWDM network throughout the state, which consists of over 1,000 miles of fiber optic cable that accesses all of Indiana’s major population areas. CICI currently owns a 10% interest in IFN.
Indiana Video Network: Realizing the need to add video to its product portfolio, Hancock Telecom partnered with 8 other telephone companies to build a video head end (located at Hancock Telecom’s headquarters) in 2004. Htv (Hancock’s IP video service) obtains its signal from the IVN head-end and IVN uses IFN to transport the video signal to other companies throughout the state. Currently, CICI’s ownership interest in IVN is 12.5%.