FMTC fiber project reaches milestone

The Farmers Mutual Telephone Company of Stanton, is continuing to make strides in its plans for a fiber internet roll-out across four communities.
Nearly a year ago in 2024, FMTC announced they were going to build out their fiber network to the residential areas of Red Oak, Clarinda, Corning and Bedford. FMTC CEO Kevin Cabbage said at the time, they had a plan that this would take about three years to accomplish. A portion of Red Oak and Clarinda were engineered to receive fiber optic coverage, and Cabbage said the roll-out has gone well.
“All of that construction is done except for just a few remaining service drops, taking the fiber optics to people’s homes that have signed up for service over the past several winter months. Now that it’s spring, we can get back in and start doing some construction. We have the majority of those people hooked up to our service now and we’re getting some very nice unsolicited comments fro new customers on FMTC about our service and the way we treat them professionally,” Cabbage said.
Cabbage added the company prides itself on being local and available. “How many CEOs can you go to and step in their office and have an opportunity to talk about what’s going on in your community? Myself and the FMTC staff are right here in Stanton so you can actually go have a conversation with us. You can find FMTC employees in each local community, participating in and providing support in addition to the great service that FMTC provides.”
While FMTC’s fiber network has been available to businesses in Red Oak, Clarinda, Corning and Bedford, residential fiber is now available too. With residential fiber now available to portions of Red Oak and Clarinda, residents now have the opportunity to remain in our communities when working from home. The opportunity of fiber Internet also aids small rural communities in recruiting new businesses of all sizes. Individuals may utilize a fiber connection to enhance their educational opportunities as well. 
“This is a growth opportunity for our communities as well. It’s actually in our vision statement that we want to help grow our communities. We do that by providing them a connection to the world, a fast high-speed reliable connection, through an underground buried fiber optic network. Chris Hughes lives just outside of Red Oak. He’s been on our fiber for several years. He’s a retired two-star major general from the U.S. Army and moved back here to retire. He was really struggling with being connected to the world in his capacity, especially with his new company. We were able to get Chris hooked up and it kept him in the area, otherwise he was planning to leave,” advised Cabbage.
Regarding the roll-out of FMTC’s fiber network, Cabbage emphasized the importance of fully connecting the community at this time. 
“We made an investment of almost $6 million in 2024 in the communities of Red Oak and Clarinda. The business model only works if we have customers signed up and taking our service and generating revenue for us to not only help maintain that network, but maintain the cost of operating it and continuing to improve it,” stated Cabbage.
As FMTC waits for more potential subscribers to sign up for fiber optic construction, Cabbage said they’ve slowed down the phased approach for this year. 
“This year is going to be focused on gaining customers along the existing fiber routes that we already have in place. Our vision has not changed. We will complete fiber to the home networks within those four communities: Red Oak, Clarinda, Corning, Bedford. We are slowing the pace down to make sure that we have adequate customer demand to support the investment that we’re making in those communities. We will continue to get this done. What we had hoped to get done in three years is now going to be driven on how quickly people sign up for our service,” Cabbage explained. “We had planned on starting phase two this year, and we have people calling and asking when we’re starting phase two so that’s disappointing to them, and it’s disappointing to us as well. But it still is very much our focus and our vision to get this done.”
Cabbage said FMTC will be boosting its communication efforts and went door to door leaving information with people who haven’t yet made the transition. FMTC staff’s intention with this initiative is to educate potential subscribers about FMTC, as well as seeking their feedback. If enough sign-ups are collected, Cabbage said phase two could start in 2026.
“Where phase two is all depends on where the locations are. Building a fiber optic network is linear. We start at our central office, which is a source of all of our connections, and we have to continue to build that fiber out until it covers the whole community. So based on where our fiber is now and where the majority of the [interested subscriber] locations are, then we’ll strategically make those decisions and determine the amount of fiber to get to the locations we haven’t reached yet to serve those areas of town.” Cabbage continued, “So it’s really kind of putting it back on the people to let us know if they’re interested in our service and will take it. We will only bring a fiber optic cable to your house on your property if you sign up for our service. If you don’t sign up, then we may go right by your house. The availability of fiber would be there, but we actually will not construct fiber to the house until people sign up for our service.” Cabbage additionally offered, FMTC’s fiber network supports “Symmetrical upload and download speeds and we have no data caps.”
According to the numbers, Red Oak had the possibility of 1,363 connections. A total of 530 signed up for FMTC, and almost 84% of those people are actually in service today. Clarinda has 919 locations available, 165 signed up, and 76% of those customers are in service today. Cabbage said FMTC also has redundant connectivity, so if a fiber cable gets cut, they don’t have large scale outages. Staff work full time in mapping and physically locating fiber cables to prevent accidental cuts. If the worst happens, Cabbage said they work fast to make things right.
“We, on average, respond and resolve our situation with customers within 24 hours. We’d like to say same day, but it all depends on when, what time the call comes in. We have technicians on call 24/7 and they’re directed to respond, especially in an outage situation because you never know. Sometimes internet disruptions can affect life support devices, or if someone is working from home, it interferes with their profession or their education. A high priority at FMTC is our response times when things do happen, and very rarely does it take us longer than 24 hours to respond. Depending on the problem, it can often be resolved quickly, and 75% of the time it can be resolved remotely.”
Cabbage said taking fiber internet to the area communities, especially Red Oak, has been a long time coming.
“I remember the original discussions in Red Oak in the early 2000s. We were involved at the very beginning. There were some plans in place for Red Oak to establish their own communications company. Prior to 2010 we started taking fiber optics into Red Oak to the business community and just been slowly building out as those businesses contacted us and helped us financially get those routes constructed to get them supported. In a roundabout way, we’ve been at this for almost 20 years. It wasn’t until last year that we finally announced that we’re going into the residential areas. So the businesses have always had us as an option, several businesses in Red Oak have had our service for quite some time, but the residential areas had not had FMTC as a choice. So now they do and it’s now about us getting them to hear us out and trust that we do what we say we’re going to do,” Cabbage said. “This is something that our company is really focused and excited about doing.”
Cabbage also praised the FMTC staff for their hard work and dedication. “I get a lot of credit for what FMTC does. The credit goes to everybody here at FMTC that really works as a team. We take a lot of pride in what we do.”
Cabbage said they’re offering special promotions to boost their subscribers. Visit myfmtc.com/sign-up for more details.