Investor Spotlight: Citizens

Company: Citizens Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (d.b.a. Citizens)

Type of business: Telecommunications

Mission: Our Mission is to provide quality service, excellent support, and advanced technology.

What makes Citizens special?
Citizens is a regional full-service communications and entertainment provider serving rural communities throughout Southwest Virginia. Headquartered in Floyd, Virginia, Citizens is a Membership Cooperative with roots tracing back to 1914 when landline telephone was established in rural Floyd County. Thus credit is given to the lineage in the company name — Citizens.

With more than 100 years of innovation behind us, we’ve withstood the test of time and have experience you can rely on. Citizens remains a Membership Cooperative — owned by members who are also our customers. Today, Citizens provides VoIP (digital phone service), IPTV, web and email hosting, DSL, and FTTP (Fiber to the Premise) services as well as Business Ethernet and FTTH (Fiber to the Home). We have most recently expanded our product offerings to include medical alert services and monitored Security & Automation products for business and residential clients.

As we continue to expand into surrounding communities, our commitment to provide the latest in communication technologies remains the same. It is our mission to provide our customers with quality service, excellent support and advanced technology. We have a dedication to customer service that is hard to beat and a commitment to technology.

Why does Citizens contribute to the mission of Onward NRV?
We are not only headquartered in the NRV, 95% of our 64 employees live, play, and shop here. Our employees are very involved and committed to the communities they live in.

Citizens embraces new technology; we help local families and businesses understand and use it to their benefit. We recognize our role in providing the foundation, the network.

Citizens owns and operates a 440 Mile Open Access Network that spans 10 counties, 10 towns, and 3 cities in and around the New River Valley. We offer enterprises services directly to customers and and wholesale transport services to ISPs in Virginia and North Carolina.

We routinely partner and discuss with local and state government agencies the deployment of advanced broadband services and how to remove barriers.

What’s new with Citizens?
In 2016, Citizens started offering FTTH (fiber to the home) services in the town of Floyd and started offering Home/Business/Farm Automation Solutions (Internet of Things or IoT) in the NRV, which includes commercial grade surveillance camera systems, access control systems, and automation devices and sensors.

This year we broke ground on a multi-year FTTH (fiber to the home) buildout in our ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) footprint which is primarily Floyd County and the edges of the surround counties. We also just announced that we will be launching Gigabit Residential Broadband service to FTTH Customers sometime in 2018.

Virginia’s New River Valley: For those searching for an inspiring place to live and do business, Virginia’s New River Valley provides both an eclectic small town atmosphere and an innovative, collaborative business community with a loyal, highly skilled, and educated workforce. Offering the best of both worlds – magnificent mountains, cutting-edge research, arts, entertainment, and education – it’s A NATURAL FIT.

Onward NRV: Onward NRV is a public/private, regional economic development organization whose mission is to attract and retain world class jobs, investment and talent in Virginia’s New River Valley. It’s also a movement where leaders from business, government, and higher education work together to promote the economic vitality of the region.