An Arkansas company has completed its acquisition of “Iowa Telecom.” Since June, 30th 2000 Iowa Telecom has provided local telephone service to 300 rural Iowa communities which used to be served to G.T.E. Iowa Telecom is now owned by the Arkansas-based Windstream Corporation. It’s an acquisition that has a $1.2 billion price tag.
Windstream announced the deal had closed on Tuesday and that Iowa Telecom’s C.E.O. had been named to the Windstream board of directors. Iowa Telecom has been operating nearly a quarter of a million access phone lines in Iowa and Minnesota. It has nearly 100-thousand high-speed Internet customers and about 27,000 digital TV customers in the two states.
Windstream is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and now operates in 23 states. Windstream executives have not yet announced whether they will keep all 800 Iowa Telecom employees on the payroll, although Windstream announced last year it will keep Iowa Telecom’s headquarters open in Newton and expand the call center there.
See the announcement from Winstream here: news.windstream.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1219