In the early 1990s, Allen Arvig heard rumblings about a relatively obscure, largely untested, and somewhat clunky new technology.
In the telecommunications industry at the time, it was common to hear of promising innovations, even if they didn’t all live up to the hype. This particular technology, in its own right, was still unproven—and from a business standpoint at least—risky.
But if you kept an ear to the ground, as Arvig did, the chatter about this fledgling new development kept getting louder. So Arvig, a seasoned executive at the helm of a family-owned phone company, kept listening.
As time would tell, it’s a good thing he did.
This year, Arvig—the company Allen’s parents, Royale and Eleanor, purchased in October 1950—will celebrate 75 years. For the independent, Perham, Minn.-based company, It’s a milestone marked by a transformation from a small, rural telephone company to one of the nation’s largest independent broadband providers.
However, it’s hard to make such a leap without a few bold moves throughout the company’s history, including a pivotal bet in the 1990s on a relatively unknown technology—the internet.
You can learn the whole story on their website.