About New Lisbon Telephone Company

The New Lisbon Telephone Company was incorporated in 1901 by J.M. Mercer, John A. Miller, H. H. Koons, and J.R. Leaky who served as the first directors. C.O. Wright was employed to supervise the building of the exchange and to maintain it when it went into service. In 1906, Straughn Telephone Company was purchased.

One of the original stockholders, Lawrence Schildtknecht, was made executive secretary in 1921 and served in that capacity for the next 25 years.
The Central Office was constructed in 1950. It housed the office, switching and a garage for the one and only service truck. The switchboard was located in a private residence behind the building. Today, the Central Office still functions as a switching office.
The New Lisbon Company was granted the very first Rural Electrification Administration (REA) telephone loan in the United States, used in conversion of the exchange to dial operation in November 1951.

In 1952, the Millville Telephone Company was purchased and it too was rebuilt and converted to dial. The company's service area consists of the Henry County communities of New Lisbon, Straughn, Millville and the rural areas surrounding them.
Colored phones were offered in 1967 at the cost of $5.00 if the subscriber would take an extension line, otherwise the phone was $6.00. All phones prior to this were black.

The plant was completely rebuilt in 1971 and consolidated into one exchange at New Lisbon. Most of the outside plant is now buried and the company offered all one-party private line service. Extended Area Local Service was offered to the nearby communities of New Castle, Spiceland, Lewisville and Mooreland. This was done with more REA funds.

In 1975, the company repaid in full the first loan that it received from the REA. On April 4, 1986, the company put into service a Northern Telecom DNS-10 digital switch office with custom calling features.

High speed DSL was offered to the 332 exchange community in 2004.A new office building was constructed in 2006 near the old office building.

In 2006, as the first in the United States, New Lisbon Telephone replaced their DMS-10 with the ultra-modern Nortel C1500 IP Softswitch. The C1500 transforms digital telephony to IP packet switching, bringing Voice-over-IP (VoIP), IP trunking and Voice mail services to the exchange.

A new wireless tower was constructed on 700S in early 2009 which serves the Lewisville area. To further expand the wireless service area, Mooreland Wireless Internet was purchased in the Fall of 2009, which serves the north and northeastern sections of Henry County.

 

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