In the late 1990's, several of the Regional Bell Operating Companies and other large telecommunications companies, such as GTE Midwest Incorporated, decided to sell many of their rural assets. Many of these large providers had decided to focus investment capital and resources on their urban markets and national wireless and business service operations, rather than on their rural markets, which we believe were historically underserved by the large providers. We concluded that GTE Midwest Incorporated's divestiture of its rural Iowa operations presented an attractive opportunity to improve the financial performance of this business by improving existing networks, offering customers additional services and providing high quality, locally focused customer service. We began business on June 30, 2000 when we acquired the Iowa operations of GTE Midwest Incorporated.
