About Us
Mid-Plains Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. - Tulia, Texas
In 1949 the Rural Electrification Act (REA) of 1936 was extended to allow loans to telephone companies wishing to extend their connections to unconnected rural areas.
In an effort to offer telephone service to rural areas in Swisher County Texas a meeting was held on January 23rd, 1950, at the auditorium of Tulia High School in Tulia, Texas. Twelve individuals, out of the approximately five hundred in attendance, were chosen to serve as the Board of Directors of the newly formed Mid-Plains Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (Mid-Plains). After months of preparation and coordination with the REA on October 30th, 1950, it became official, that Mid-Plains would begin to construct a telephone system.
The first area of service was the community of Kress, located in Swisher County. Kress officially came into service in July of 1952. The original subscriber count was 105. By 1958 as demand had increased for telephone service, Mid-Plains added the additional areas of Elkins, Redmon, Bean, Cleta, Umbarger, Goodnight, Gurley and Vigo Park exchanges. All areas at this time were served by aerial open-wire lines with an eight-party service. It wouldn’t be unit the mid-seventies that Mid-Plains begin replacing aerial lines with buried lines. The late-seventies saw the change from a party-line service to a single-party service. In 1996, Mid-Plains purchased the GTE owned Silverton, Tx serving rights, adding 425 lines to Mid-Plains growing subscriber base.
After months of discussions, it was decided that Mid-Plains would need to start replacing copper cable with fiber optic cables. Thus, 2004 construction begin on new fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) builds to customer locations.
In July 2013 we launched our TV service providing local and national content. This was all possible due to our new fiber optic builds. However, as of August 2022, this service will no longer be available. Mid-Plains made the tough decision to not renew its contracts for TV service due to content providers cost that would not make it affordable to the end user.
Mid-Plains Communications is our subsidiary company that allows us to serve customers outside of our designated boundaries. Over the years we had been fielding more and more request for our services in areas we were not in. Therefore, to meet that demand it was decided to form Mid-Plains Communications to fulfill those requests.
Over the years Mid-Plains has seen many different types of technology utilized to bring Phone, Internet, and TV (sadly now not offered) to its customer base. From open wire to copper lines to today’s fiber optic lines and all the vastly different types of technology required to make it all work Mid-Plains has always been proactive in providing the best technology available. This all done in a serving territory that spans approximately 3,800 sq. mi.
Today, the demand for better, faster, and more reliable broadband is at an all time high. Therefore, we continue to make the required equipment upgrades that provide our customers with the best possible service available. Yes, our focus has changed from the early days of providing great telephone service to now providing fast and reliable broadband. We have not lost sight that we are a customer-based company, here to serve and support all our customers in all there telephone and broadband needs.
