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On July 31, 2013, Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (Citizens) announced the completion of construction on its BTOP (Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program) CCI (Comprehensive Community Infrastructure) Project. The $11.5 million project, titled New River Valley – Regional Open Access Network (NRV-ROAN), was completed on schedule and on budget. The completed project placed 200 miles of fiber with the purpose of providing broadband access for economic development, research, education, emergency response, and health care. The NRV-ROAN is a collaboration between Citizens and the New River Valley Network Wireless Authority (NRVNWA), which received a $9.2 million grant under the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and a $396,622 grant by the Virginia Tobacco Commission for this project.

The NRV-ROAN project meets the needs of many community anchor institutions in the New River Valley region of Virginia who have previously reported being unable to access high-speed, affordable broadband services. “This ‘middle-mile’ project covers a seven-county region including Wythe, Pulaski, Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Roanoke and Botetourt Counties. The 200 Gbps network addition includes eight primary interconnection points that are strategically positioned to provide service to unserved and/or undeserved areas and to tie into other open access fiber networks. “This network allows wireless and other internet service providers to offer broadband to areas where service was previously unavailable, or areas that were determined to be economically infeasible.” said Dennis Reece, COO & Assistant General Manager of Citizens.

Because of this new expansion, more than 50 Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) including Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Community College, local high schools, public safety entities, health-care facilities and government facilities, now have access to symmetrical speeds between 5Mbps and 10Gbps (10,000Mbps). To date, 39 Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) and nine businesses have been connected as a result of this project.

The NRV-ROAN, along with Citizens’ existing Open Access Fiber Network, extends over 438 miles and spans ten counties (Roanoke, Montgomery, Wythe, Pulaski, Floyd, Giles, Botetourt, Patrick, Carroll, Grayson), ten towns (Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Wytheville, Floyd, Pulaski, Dublin, Hillsville, Independence, Stuart, Pearisburg), and three cities (Salem, Radford, and Galax). This combined network passes by or through more than a dozen industrial parks and multiple small business incubators.

Citizens is a member-owned telephone cooperative headquartered in the Floyd, Virginia, providing communication services within the region since 1914. For more information about Citizens and the services offered, visit at citizens.coop. Click Here to download a pdf of this release.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative (Citizens) is a leading-edge technology provider. Daily, the company that employs around 60 people, researches, tests, and deploys upgrades in technology that are unknown to the customer. “We are in the process of integrating multiple systems for efficiency and to provide better support of our customers. While working with two of our vendors and updating data between systems on Tuesday, June 4, 2013, we ran across a glitch which was undetected in our testing or the testing by our vendors. That glitch accidentally sent out commands that reset several hundred DSL modems back to factory default. We were able to promptly find the issue, stop the process, and were able to get most customers back online and working by 7PM that evening. However, we still had a few hundred modems that did not come back online on their own and needed to be reconfigured by our staff” stated Dennis Reece, COO & Assistant General Manager.

After the discovery of the issue and the impact, Citizens employees went into triage mode and began offering extended hours, notifications via various medias, and in-home visits to quickly reconfigure the affected equipment to get the customer back up and working. While this outage did not affect the majority of customers, this was an unusual and embarrassing occurrence for our company.

“We apologize for the outage and for the inconvenience this has caused our customers. We appreciate the understanding and support shown from our members. It is our mission to provide quality service, excellent support, and advanced technology. We do not take this situation lightly and ensure our customers that we are a strong, stable, and reliable company. Each employee of Citizens has shown their commitment to go the extra mile during this recent outage.” stated Greg Sapp, CEO & General Manager.

You may be experiencing any of the following:

Someone tells you they tried to call you but the call didn’t get through or the call rang on their end but your phone did not ring.
A call came through but the quality was poor.
A call came through but the caller ID was incorrect.

Citizens Telephone Cooperative strives to provide quality service at all times. However, people who live in rural areas, all around the country are reporting that calls to them are not getting through, or they are receiving calls with poor quality.

Please be assured, this issue is not within your Cooperative’s network. The problem starts with the long distance carrier used by the customer who placed the call. The problem can only be resolved by the carrier used by the customer who makes the call.

This nationwide epidemic is negatively affecting local businesses, public safety, and our relationship with our customers. Rural carriers have complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and state agencies. The FCC has created a task force to investigate and address the issue and rural telco advocates are encouraging swift and severe action against all of the providers at the center of the problem. We are hopeful that the large nationwide providers involved in these issues or the FCC will act to address these problems.

In the meantime, here’s what you can do:

Ask for the name of the Long Distance carrier used by the person trying to reach you.
Call Citizens with the info including the name of the carrier, the number calling, and the time of day if possible so we can contact the carrier on your behalf to try and resolve the issue.

For more info:

Citizens Telephone Cooperative (Citizens) recently announced the expansion of its existing open-access fiber network in rural Virginia, making affordable, high-speed broadband service a reality for under-served and unserved areas. On Wednesday, April 25, representatives from local and state organizations joined for a ribbon cutting ceremony signifying the joint endeavors of the open-access project and the renaming of the NRV Competitiveness Center to the NRV Business Center.

This project meets the need of many community anchor institutions in the New River Valley region of Virginia who report being unable to access high-speed, affordable broadband services. In an effort to address this problem, NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) awarded a $9.2 million dollar grant to Citizens Telephone Cooperative (Citizens) to extend its open-access fiber network into unserved and under-served communities in the region. The project, New River Valley – Regional Open Access Network or NRV-ROAN, is an $11.5 million dollar project to construct 186 miles of middle mile fiber with access in remote communities with the purpose of providing access for economic development, research, education, emergency response, and health care. The grant proposal was a collaboration between Citizens and the New River Valley Network Wireless Authority (NRVNWA).

This “middle-mile” project traverses a seven county region which includes Wythe, Pulaski, Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Roanoke and Botetourt. Initially this 186 mile network addition will be 100Gbps (100,000Mbps) and include eight primary interconnection points that are strategically positioned to provide service to unserved and/or under-served areas and to tie into other open access fiber networks. This will allow wireless and other internet service providers to offer services to areas where service was previously unavailable; or areas that were determined to be economically infeasible.

“The impact and opportunities this joint venture will provide on these rural communities by allowing them to gain access to high quality, high speed, and affordable networks is paramount.” says Dennis Reece, COO & Assistant General Manager of Citizens.

Because of this new expansion, more than 50 community anchor institutions including Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Community College, public safety entities, health-care facilities and government facilities will have access to symmetrical speeds between 5Mbps and 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) through Citizens’ extended open-access network.