Telephone cooperative members travel to Jackson for annual meeting

Approximately 155 members of the Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company, representing all districts of the cooperative, attended the 65th annual meeting of members and directors on Thursday, Sept. 22 at NNTC facilities in Jackson.

The membership re-elected Larry Domina of Coleridge as director at large, Jeff Hartung of Dixon as district two director, and Jeff Hurrell of Craig as district five director.

NNTC General Manager Pat McElroy shared trends in the industry as part of his manager’s report. He stated the average internet gigabyte usage per household nationwide is 491 per month, while among the NNTC customer base, average usage is 277 GBs per month. He also reported usage among customers is up 25% since last year.

“The real test of our network is when we look at these trends five years into the future and what type of growth we’re going to see. We need to make sure we have a network that we build that can handle three to five times the data we are passing today,” McElroy said.

He also told the crowd of 225 that the company would need to grow the network from a 10 GB ring to a 100 GB rings over the next five years to be prepared for the increase in internet traffic.

McElroy also asked members to take notice of the maple tree planted earlier in the day in memory of Emory Graffis. McElroy shared that Graffis had given him a chance at NNTC back in 1989. Graffis worked for NNTC for 50 years, starting as a tree trimmer and eventually becoming the company’s general manager in 1978 until 2014.

McElroy stated that “Emory was thoughtful, wise, humorous and kind to everyone.”

Graffis died earlier this year.

Individuals who want to watch the meeting in its entirety may do so by visiting NNTC’s website, http://www.nntc.net and click, NNTC Newsletters under the “News”heading.