TOTELCOM COMMUNICATIONS

Business Services > Communication Systems

Most people would never think the telephone company as being one of the oldest businesses in De Leon, but it is.

In 1895 Bob Gilmore started the De Leon Telephone Service. Records are scarce, but thereafter L.H. Shannon and A. I. Stephens had turns owning the system. In 1904, Stephens sold the system to B.E. Howe who operated it until selling the company to Southwestern Bell in 1929.

In 1944, Southwestern Bell sold the system (all 136 subscribers) to E.F. Stephens who renamed the business De Leon Telephone Company. Stephens converted the old hand crank system into a dial type and expanded his operation to include the Carbon, Desdemona, and Olden areas.

The year 1966 brought change when Stephens agreed to sell De Leon Telephone Company to Comanche County Telephone Cooperative which had to first restructure from a cooperative into a for profit entity (Comanche County Telephone Company, Inc.) to complete the transaction by 1968.

The Cooperative, in the beginning, was a non-profit organization formed in order to acquire borrowed money from the USDA REA’s (Rural Electrification Administration) telephone loan program which began in the late 1940’s. The money received helped provide telephone service to all rural residents in Sidney, Proctor, and Newburg areas. The Cooperative’s first services were provided in 1952 when it purchased a couple of small switchboards from owners who were providing service to a few local homes. It took several years to accomplish full availability of services throughout the planned area.

In the 1960’s, Texas cooperative laws barred a cooperative utility from servicing a city with a population over 1,500. So, in order to provide telephone service to the city of De Leon, Cooperative members exchanged their capital certificates for a restricted single share of $10 stock in the new entity – Comanche County Telephone Company, Inc. (CCTC) – and CCTC actually purchased De Leon Telephone Company in 1968 as above mentioned.

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