History
Rick Ekstrand founded Rural Cellular Corporation (RCC) in 1990 through the partnership of 40 telephone companies that held five cellular licenses.[3] The company’s original service area was located north and west of St. Cloud, Minnesota.[3]
Following its initial public offering in February 1996, RCC pursued a series of acquisitions that expanded its directly marketed population served (POPs) from 600,000 to 6.4 million.[4]
On July 30, 2007, Verizon Wireless announced an agreement to acquire Rural Cellular Corporation in order to expand its network coverage.[5] At the time of the acquisition, RCC, headquartered in Alexandria, Minnesota, served 716,000 customers in New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Alabama, Mississippi, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.[5]
