Shentel, officially Shenandoah Telecommunications Company, is a publicly traded

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...

company headquartered in

Edinburg, Virginia Edinburg is a town in Shenandoah County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,041 at the 2010 census. History The Bowman-Zirkle Farm, Campbell Farm, Clem-Kagey Farm, Edinburg Historic District, Edinburg Mill, Dr. Christian Hockman H ...

. It operates a digital wireless and wireline network in rural Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

History

Shentel was founded in January 1902 as the Farmers' Mutual Telephone System of Shenandoah County (FMTS). This was one of a number of Farmers' Mutual telephone systems established in rural areas of the United States. The company's initial goal was to bring telephone service to rural residents of Shenandoah County, VA. In 1960 the name changed to Shenandoah Telephone Company, then in 1981 to Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel). The company launched

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

service and a fiber optic network in the 1980s. In 1984 Shentel added mobile and paging services. In 1990 Shentel launched Shenandoah Cellular, the first company in Virginia to offer cellular service to a rural area. Internet service was made available to Shentel customers in 1994. In the 2000s Shentel began to expand its cable footprint - purchasing cable assets from

Rapid Communications Rapid Communications was a telecommunications company that provided digital cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone service to rural communities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Oklahoma, Kansas, ...

in Virginia and West Virginia in 2008, and acquiring JetBroadband in southern Virginia and southern West Virginia in 2010. Later in 2010, Shentel purchased two small cable systems from Suddenlink Communications (one in West Virginia, the other in Maryland). In May 2016, Shentel finished acquiring its competitor Ntelos for 640 million dollars. acquiring 297,500 subscribers. The deal also transferred an additional 291,000 subscribers from Sprint in exchange for Ntelos spectrum, making Shentel the sixth largest public wireless company in the United States. In February 2019, Shentel announced the agreement to purchase Big Shandy Broadband, a Kentucky-based cable television, broadband Internet and phone provider. On August 27, 2020, T-Mobile USA has decided to purchase the wireless assets of the company.

References

Companies based in Virginia Companies listed on the Nasdaq Telecommunications companies established in 1902 Telecommunications companies of the United States 1902 establishments in Virginia {{Telecom-company-stub