Ron, If you listen to the college educated finance guys that are disciples of the now dis-credited Ayn Rand, you might be led to believe that investor owned, bigger is better, mergers are good for everyone, equals the best of all possible worlds.

Here in my little corner of the world, I guess we are "cursed" in having to put up with the Communistic Co-Ops. My land-line and DSL is provided by Mid-Rivers Co-Op, which is headquartered 50 miles away in the town of Circle, MT (pop. 593). Service from them has been great -- kinda expect that when you either know the guys personally or they usually manage to slip in a question about how you are related to one of their acquaintances. Here is a pic of the fiber terminal located about 2 miles up the road, that provides both my land-line and 1.5 Meg, $45 / month DSL.

Of course, we also have cell service here. That is provided by Nemont Telephone Co-Op headquartered in Scobey, MT (pop. 894). I also know many of the workers there and service is great. Not much chance of being able to speak to a Spanish or French language operator there, although you might be able to talk to someone who speaks the Lakota language if need be. All of our cell phones now have to be equipped with a GPS chip that reveals your geographic coordinates on any call placed to 911. The 911 center is tied into the phone HQs, so any call placed to 911 shows name, home address and GPS coordinates of the calling cell phone. It is a pretty good system and much better than the old way. Here is a pic of a 185' cell tower, looking ENE about two miles away:

In the foreground, you can also see one of the poles that provides my 3-phase service. This outfit is Sheridan Electric Co-Op headquartered in Medicine Lake, MT (pop. 218). I had this line built in 1995 and my share of the construction costs have now been completely returned + I've also gotten patronage dividends that more than make up for the opportunity costs on what I had to pay to have the line built.

All in all, I guess I'm glad that the big businesses have no interest in invading my territory. With the Co-Ops, we seem to have decent and even above par services, and if left to the investor owned entities, I'm afraid that we'd end up with "what the birdie left on the post", because customers here are measured in miles / customer and not customers / mile that the corporate bean counters concern themselves so much with.