On Saturday, April 25, 85 Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative members attended PVT’s Annual Meeting at the Artesia Center. This year’s event celebrated the 66th year of PVT’s service to its members and their communities.

The meeting began with the presentation of colors and the invocation. A video presenting the achievements of PVT over the course of 2014 was shown.

PVT CEO Glenn Lovelace opened the video, and he highlighted many accomplishments of the company and said, “We are proud to say that we can now provide broadband to over 95% of the homes and businesses that we serve.  The backhaul capacity between our local exchanges and the internet is being upgraded to handle the increased traffic.  The upgrade is very near completion.  When finished, this will improve our ability to handle data by more than 100X our previous backhaul capacity.”

He also addressed two other issues, Call Completion and Net Neutrality, which are discussed in other articles in this newsletter.

Danny Carter, Vice President of Plant and Operations spoke about the upgrades and said, “We installed new electronic sites in all exchanges, doing our best to keep up with the high demand of broadband.”

Rae Aaron, Vice President of IT and Data Services expanded on this. Aaron gave details on the work PVT did to improve telephone communication at a very remote ranch. For years the system had been plagued with reliability issues, and now it has solid and reliable service.

Aaron went on to say, “At last year’s Annual Meeting, PVT’s internet backhaul consisted of two 1 GB circuits.  PVT worked to increase that backhaul by 250%.  At completion we had five Gb of transport consisting of three 1 Gb circuits to Denver and two additional 1 Gb circuits to Phoenix.  This provides ample transport as well as room to grow.”

Glenn Lovelace closed the video with, “As always, we are appreciative of our members and your ongoing support.  We also want to thank our directors and our employees.  Lastly, we want to thank our families who help us make this work possible.”

The PVT scholarship winners were also honored. More details on the scholarship winners can be found in this newsletter. The meeting closed with drawings for many door prizes, including two grand prizes. The $500 grand prize was won by Becky Varbel. Bob Harrell won the 55-inch HD TV.

The meeting concluded with PVT employees serving the members a lunch that comprised of smoked brisket, pinto beans, potato salad, and rolls with a peach or cherry cobbler dessert.

If you missed the annual meeting, you can watch the video at pvt.com. If you would like a copy of the annual report, call 1-800-505-4844 to request a copy.