Company type | Public |
---|---|
Nasdaq:
SHEN S&P 600 component Russell 2000 component | |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | 1902 [1] |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Services | Local and long-distance telephone service, cable television, Internet access, wireless Internet access, digital phone, fiber-optic Internet, wholesale |
Revenue | $612 million (2017) [2] |
$46.5 million (2017) [2] | |
$-6.995 million (2016) [2] | |
Number of employees | 1200 [3] |
Website |
www |
Shentel, officially Shenandoah Telecommunications Company, is a publicly traded telecommunications company headquartered in Edinburg, Virginia. It operates a digital wireless and wireline network in rural Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. [4]
Shentel was founded in January 1902 as the Farmers' Mutual Telephone System of Shenandoah County (FMTS). [5] 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. [6] In 1960 the name changed to Shenandoah Telephone Company, then in 1981 to Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel). [4] The company launched cable TV 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. [4]
In the 2000s Shentel began to expand its cable footprint - purchasing cable assets from Rapid Communications in Virginia and West Virginia in 2008, [7] and acquiring JetBroadband in southern Virginia and southern West Virginia in 2010. [8] Later in 2010, Shentel purchased two small cable systems from Suddenlink Communications (one in West Virginia, the other in Maryland). [9]
In May 2016, Shentel finished acquiring its competitor Ntelos [10] for 640 million dollars. [11] acquiring 297,500 subscribers. The deal also transferred an additional 291,000 subscribers from Sprint in exchange for Ntelos spectrum, [12] [13] making Shentel the sixth largest public wireless company in the United States. [4]
In February 2019, Shentel announced the agreement to purchase Big Shandy Broadband, a Kentucky-based cable television, broadband Internet and phone provider. [14]
On August 27, 2020, T-Mobile USA decided to purchase the wireless assets of the company. [15]
A great many telephone charters are coming in to the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth to be recorded….received yesterday…Farmers' Mutual Telephone System of Shenandoah County.