Please join us on Thursday, May 24th from 5:00-7:00 pm at Prichard Auditorium.

Your whole family will enjoy the festivities including:

• FREE picnic dinner featuring hot dogs and polish dogs
• FREE cotton candy
• FREE games for kids and adults

We really hope you will join us on Thursday, May 24th and can take part in the celebration at our Annual Customer Appreciation Night. After all you’ve done for us it’s a pleasure to do this for you!

Bring your kids (and your appetite) and join the party!

This will be a 3 person scramble (Men, Women or Mixed), 18-hole golf tournament, beginning with a 9:00 AM shotgun start. The cost is $50.00 per person which includes green fees, mulligan & lunch. There are a limited number of teams, so please contact our office to sign up at 402-245-4451 and ask for Debbie Witt or Chuck Whitney.

Here are some ways you can help:

• Put together a team of players from your company and join in the fun!
• Donate items for golf flag prizes.
• Suggested items include company golf balls, shirts or other golf related items.
• Show up - - Have Fun!

We look forward to your participation and seeing you on June 9th!

Download and fill out this PDF form to enter

Chuck Whitney from Southeast Nebraska Communications and Mary Wiltse from Falls City BPO Does Drove #56

The Does donated $150.00 towards the Backpack Program that serves over 36 families in our area. The students take home meals on the weekends to help supplement their meals for 34 weeks during the school year. It costs approximately $200 per student for the school year. All donations are very much appreciated.

Thank you to the following people for donating and making the soups:

Julie Bauman's Office: Favorite Soup Winner

A delicious thank you to Carol Zimmerman and crew from Falls City Public Schools for donating the cinnamon rolls.

Thank you to the following people for volunteering their time to help serve: Melissa Hardenberger, Tim Heckenlively, Gale Dunkhas, Ernie Valentine, JP Holys, Becky Runyan, Linda Santo, Cindy Witt, Ashley & Morgan Hodge, Jeri Elwonger, Jeannie Mullins, Eleanor Last, Mary Jane Gist, Pam & Jake Joy, Megan Gargas, Carley Youde, Emma Killingsworth, Aaron Cebula, Sue Nutzman, Bev Whitney, Brenda & Willa Fritz and SNC Employees.

“Upon completion, SNC’s service area will be one of, if not the biggest providers of 100 percent FTTH technology in the state,” said Ray Joy, SNC Vice President and General Manager. Joy also noted that Falls City would be the largest community in Nebraska that is 100 percent fiber optic.

In total, 517 miles of fiber will be used in the project and over 1,400 homes and businesses will be reached.

The first phase of the construction began last Monday in the Shubert area and will include plowing and laying fiber optic cable along county roadsides and to the homes. Telcom Construction of Clearwater, MN, and subcontractor Thomas Georges’ CCS, are doing the work.  The contractors will be working on 647 Avenue North of Shubert and continue North and East to Indian Cave State Park. They expect to place approximately 1 to 2 miles of fiber optic cable daily. Also, rural residents should expect county roads to be closed to thru traffic for approximately a two mile stretch each day.

The second phase of this project will be the splicing of the cable and drops that are installed for each customer. SNC is hoping the contractors will have these first two phases completed by this fall.

The third “cut-over” phase, which involves hooking up each home and/or business to the network, is set for completion in mid-to-late 2013.

SNC wants these customers to know that they can expect to see crews three different times: the drop phase, the splicing and finally during the cutover.

The end result will be a direct line to the network for each customer, as opposed to a shared line, which means faster Internet, streaming video and movie downloads.

The upgrade will result in no cost to any customer.  This upgrade includes no new rates or fees.  SNC customers will use the same phones, the same computers and the same electronics in their communications.

This rural expansion project is the final step in a project that began in the spring of 2009 with the company actively applying for assistance with the project. SNC received an $11 million loan from the USDA Rural Utilities Service, along with an $11.3 million grant and loan through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which helped build the fiber optic network and expand the system to rural areas.

"These problems can have dire consequences," the FCC wrote in the ruling. "Small businesses can lose customers who get frustrated when their calls don’t go through. Urgent long distance calls from friends of family can be missed. Schools may be unable to reach parents with critical alerts, including school closings due to extreme weather. And those in need of help may be unable to reach public safety officials."

It is widely believed that certain carriers are deliberately failing to complete calls as a means of avoiding the payment of per-minute inter-carrier compensation to the terminating carrier. Those charges are highest in rural areas, where reports of call completion problems have been increasing dramatically.

The FCC’s nine-page ruling references a variety of ways that failure to complete calls to another carrier violates existing statutes. The commission also said originating carriers could be liable for actions taken by least cost routers – other carriers who terminate calls for them.

"If carriers continue to hand off calls to agents, intermediate providers or others that a carrier knows are not completing a reasonable percentage of calls, or are otherwise restricting traffic, that is an unjust or unreasonable practice prohibited by section 201 of the [Telecommunications] Act," the FCC said.

The commission also noted that enforcement action would not be restricted only to carriers that fail to complete calls but also would include practices such as informing a caller that a number is not reachable or is out of service when the number is, in fact, reachable and in service. Such practices, the FCC said, are deceptive or misleading and therefore are unjust and unreasonable practices under Section 201(b) of the Act.

Eventually the motivation for carriers to fail to complete calls to rural areas may fade away as the FCC implements planned ICC reforms, but that process will take years—and rural telco groups, as well as state utility commissions have urged the FCC not to wait to take action to address the issue. Such stakeholders have been particularly concerned since the FCC took no action after holding a rural call completion workshop back in October.

Last month a group of senators wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asking the commission to provide an update about the rural call completion issue – and that may have prompted the FCC to issue the declaratory ruling at this time.

Like electricity and telephone service, reliable, high-speed broadband is becoming an essential part of daily life for businesses and consumers. Access is critical commerce, civic participation, health care, and education across the far reaches of rural America.

The new FCC rules, however, do not promote these objectives. Although the FCC has stated its intent to ensure that all of America has comparable access to the Internet, new FCC regulations will reduce support for many smaller, locally-based cooperatives and commercial telecom providers such as ours. Among other things, under the new rules, our company will face:

• New limitations on our ability to recover investments made years ago;
• New rules that will be subject to changes every year, making it difficult to for companies to plan ahead in accordance with unknown regulatory requirements;
• Federal requirements to increase consumer rates in order to qualify for full Universal Service Fund support; and
• Reduced payments from other (often larger) carriers who use rural networks

Even where carriers and rural consumers can adapt to these changes, however, the FCC is considering further rule changes that threaten to reduce the ability of rural carriers to recover their costs. The additional changes now being considered include:

• Reducing the opportunity for returns on rural telecom investment and operations;
• Applying additional limitations on the ability to recover costs; and
• Reducing Universal Service Fund support if a competitor serves even just a small part of our serving area.

The Universal Service Fund cuts arising out of the new rules will put existing investment in rural broadband at risk, and they will discourage future investment in new broadband-capable networks by small companies such as ours. The FCC’s cuts could also lead to increased rates for many customers for telephone, broadband and other services.

From the earliest days of telephone service, Congress has enforced policies that require affordable access to reasonably comparable communications services throughout the Nation. The Universal Service Fund is essential to fulfilling this policy. But rather than supporting true universal service, the new FCC rules now being considered promise better service to some Americans at the expense of lesser service, and at higher cost, for others.

Help our company continue to provide you with the services you need at an affordable rate. Don’t let the FCC keep our rural community on the slow side of a broadband digital divide. Don’t let the FCC adopt policies that will require rural consumers to pay higher rates for telephone service and slower broadband.

Contact your congressional representatives and urge them to support regulatory action that ensures equal and affordable access to broadband for all Americans. Ask your representatives to help make sure that the new rules are implemented in a manner that is fair for all rural consumers and consistent with true universal service. Ask your representatives to tell the FCC to stop pressing for new rules that will only make matters worse. Contact our office to learn more about this issue and how you can help or visit saveruralbroadband.org.

Southeast Nebraska Communications is beginning Phase Two of the FTTH project in Rulo. Beginning October 24th our utility contractors, Telcom Construction and CCS from Falls City, will start burying the Fiber Optic Service Line drops to the home. The service line drops will be buried within the village limits of Rulo. A representative from our utility contractor will contact you before the service line drop is buried to your home. If you are gone at this time, a door hanger will be left with a contact phone number.

For more information on our FTTH upgrade, please feel free to call or stop by our office with any questions you may have.

Read More About Fiber To The Home

Southeast Nebraska Communications is beginning Phase Two of the FTTH project in Salem. Beginning October 3rd our utility contractors, Telcom Construction and CCS from Falls City, will start burying the Fiber Optic Service Line drops to the home. The service line drops will be buried within the village limits of  Salem. A representative from our utility contractor will contact you before the service line drop is buried to your home. If you are gone at this time, a door hanger will be left with a contact phone number.

For more information on our FTTH upgrade, please feel free to call or stop by our office with any questions you may have.

Read More About Fiber To The Home

Southeast Nebraska Communications is beginning Phase Two of the FTTH project in Verdon. Beginning September 19th our utility contractors, Telcom Construction and CCS from Falls City, will start burying the Fiber Optic Service Line drops to the home. The service line drops will be buried within the village limits of Verdon. A representative from our utility contractor will contact you before the service line drop is buried to your home. If you are gone at this time, a door hanger will be left with a contact phone number.

For more information on our FTTH upgrade, please feel free to call or stop by our office with any questions you may have.

Read More About Fiber To The Home