Whidbey Telecom

Whidbey Telecom (formerly Whidbey Telephone Company and often called Whidbey Tel) is a private telecommunications company operating on the South End of Whidbey Island, the community of Point Roberts, Washington, and does business as Hat Island Telephone Company on Hat (Gedney) Island. Whidbey Telecom a very technologically advanced local telephone company, given its size. Whidbey Telecom is unusual because it is completely locally owned and has never been a part of a larger company. Whidbey Telecom is also unusual in that 100% of the lines it services are buried underground. This allows for uninterrupted service during major storms and power outages, as well as allowing for major upgrades to be done to the phone system with little complaint from residents, as additional infrastructure is buried.

History

Whidbey Telephone was founded in 1908 by local business owners and farmers in Langley, Washington. They wanted to provide telephone service to the community, but wanted to keep the ownership local to prevent an outside company from interfering in the affairs of the Whidbey Island community. All residents of South Whidbey had access to the Whidbey Telephone system by 1920. The company prospered, but after World War II an influx of new residents began to tax the small phone company. By 1950, the company began to make major upgrades to its network, but began to lose money. A white knight appeared in the form of David C. Henny. In 1953, Henny purchased a controlling interest in Whidbey Telephone Company. Under his leadership, the company was able to restructure and complete upgrades, all the while completing much needed upgrades to the infrastructure. The Henny family still controls the company.

Winters in Washington bring many storms, Whidbey Telephone had overhead wires, and when the storms came, the lines went down. After several winters, where 60%+ of their customers lost service, the company decided to bury its entire network. By 1961, 100% of its lines were buried, a first for local telephone companies. Since then there has yet to be a widespread service disruption because of infrastructure damage.

Whidbey Telephone became the first local phone company (west of the Rocky Mountains) to provide Internet access to its customers, in 1994. In 2000, while many phone companies were just beginning to offer DSL services, Whidbey began an aggressive campaign to provide the service to all of it customers. In just 2 years the entire service area, including Point Roberts and Hat Island had DSL service available. For a few years, the company's Internet division, Whidbey.NET even offered DSL to residents in Verizon territory on Whidbey Island. The service was a failure, due in part to aggressive marketing and disinformation provided by Verizon. To this date, there are large portions of North Whidbey that do not have access to DSL because of this failure.

Compartmentalization of Exchanges

Prior to 1991 Whidbey Telephone had two service prefixes (or exchanges), the original 321, and 221 (which was added in the late 1980s). Whidbey Island was in a period of growth, the southend community especially, and Whidbey Telephone realized that if they did not have more prefixes to use, they would shortly run out of numbers. In 1991 Whidbey added 331, 341, 579, and 730 to the existing service prefixes, and began to use them on what appears to be a random basis until 1992. That year, Whidbey changed its policy and began to issue numbers based on location. The southend was carved into different exchanges; this coincided with the ending of the company's offices acting as the primary switching station, as new switching centers were built in each of these geographical areas. Shortly thereafter, the existing numbers in those areas were gradually changed to the 'local' prefix, while retaining the extension (or last 4) that the number had before. This was around the same time that Western Washington State was broken into two area codes. These two changes, being so close together caused problems until residents gradually adapted. However, as of 2008, it is now possible to retain a number from a different area of service when moving, rather than just the extension.

When Greenbank was added to the service area in the late 1990s, Whidbey Telephone assigned all Greenbank lines a 222 prefix.

:The full list of exchanges and locations is located below.

Internet services

Internet services on Whidbey Island began in 1993. Whidbey Telephone began Whidbey Internet Services (WIS) to cover the telephone company's service area. At the same time, another company, Whidbey Internet Connections (WIC) was founded to serve customer of GTE on the north end of the island. WIC later expanded to also serve people on the south end of Whidbey Island. WIC's internet domain was 'whidbey.net', whereas WIS's was 'whidbey.com'.

Whidbey Internet Connections and Whidbey Internet Services merged in 1995 into Whidbey.NET. As a result of the merger, some customers of Whidbey.NET on the south end of Whidbey continue to have '.net' addresses whereas most south end customers have '.com'.Until 2001, Whidbey.NET maintained two different customer databases on their servers, leading some customers to have different passwords, and even different usernames depending on how and where they connected to the ISP.

Whidbey.NET began to offer DSL services to some customers (within one mile of local exchange systems) in 2000. By 2002, all Whidbey Telephone customers were capable of receiving Whidbey.NET DSL on south Whidbey Island and in Point Roberts. In 2005 the newly rebranded Whidbey Telecom Internet and Broadband began offering 5.5Mb/s DSL, and set their other speeds at 512Kb/s, and 2.5Mb/s. However, Whidbey Telecom does not offer DSL services in Verizon territory, but does still provide dial-up services in those areas.

The DSL prices are competitive, although Whidbey Telecom is the only provider available in their service area, apart from Comcast, MDM, and HughesNet.

Rebranding

In 2004, Whidbey Telephone company decided to consolidate its operations under a single name, Whidbey Telecom (Fiber Cloud continues to operate under its own name). This new identy was previewed at the Island County Fair and was officially launched in September.

:Former Divisions, and their new names.
*'Whidbey.NET' became 'Whidbey Telecom Internet and Broadband'
*'Western Long Distance' became 'Whidbey Telecom Long Distance'
*'American Alarm Systems, Inc.' became 'Whidbey Telecom Security and Alarms'

ervice area and Exchanges

All operate in Area Code 360

Whidbey Island

*Clinton - 341
*Freeland - 331
*Langley - 221
*Bayview - 321
**Locales outside of the service area with a South Whidbey Number (Foreign Exchange) - 321
*Maxwellton Beach, Scatchet Head, and Sandy Hook/Cultus Bay - 579
*Bells Beach, Baby Island, Beverly Beach - 730
*Greenbank - 222

Point Roberts

*All Areas - 945

Hat (Gedney) Island

*All Areas - 444

:Whidbey Telecom also has a 729 prefix if additional numbers are needed.

External links

* [http://www.whidbeytel.com Whidbey Telecom website]