Congratulations to the 2024 Broadband Award Winners, who we recognize for their outstanding achievements. Across our customer base, providers go above and beyond in their service to their communities and we are excited to celebrate them all.

The awards were presented at eLation eLevate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Read on to learn more about each awardee.

Customer Success Award: Syntrio

The Customer Success Award highlights a service provider that is devoted to the subscriber experience with excellent NPS or CSAT scores. Today’s recipient understands the benefits of customer communication and engagement across the customer journey as they strive to exceed the needs of their constituents.

Syntrio utilizes a hands-on approach, combined with a consistent and impactful presence (through face-to-face interactions, social media, email, print) in the Texas communities they serve. They have seen tremendous success with E-Bill and have over half of their customers participating in automatic payments. Syntrio’s Customer satisfaction surveys show 93.1% of new customers are highly satisfied with the onboarding process. Syntrio’s current NPS is 76 and showcases that their customers are raving fans.

Fiber Milestone Award: Toledo Tel

The Fiber Milestone Award celebrates a Broadband Service Provider’s expansion and growth efforts. This award goes to a company that focuses on providing fiber to the business, and fiber to the home. The Fiber Milestone Award recognizes the effort behind navigating difficult builds, while continuing to provide outstanding service.

In 2021, ToledoTel teamed with Lewis County in Washington state’s first public/private broadband partnership and was awarded a $25 million grant to fund the overbuild in and around the City of Winlock. The project is currently underway and will provide fiber-optic access to more than 2,100 homes within a 240-square-mile area. The project will be completed in 2025. Prior to this project, ToledoTel finished the installation of fiber to all the business locations within the City of Winlock in 2009.

Closing the Digital Divide: United Communications

The award for Closing the Digital Divide is given to a provider who has demonstrated a commitment to access, education, and affordability. Closing the digital divide underscores that the tough work behind providing connectivity to all stems from partnerships with Electric Cooperatives, State Broadband Offices, and local government.

United Communications began an initiative in 2020, called Project UNITE to help bridge the digital divide for the one million Tennessee residents without broadband access. Project Unite has helped provide access to the unserved and underserved by partnering with utility companies and community leaders.

To date, Project UNITE has invested more than $180 million to bring broadband connections to 35,000 passings. Project Unite provides free broadband service to volunteer fire departments, income-qualified residents and a local boys and girls club. Since 2010 The United Community foundation has awarded $55,000 in scholarships to graduating high school seniors.

Community Champion Award: Blue Valley Technologies

The Community Champion Award highlights a provider that lives and breathes community. These champions of their communities are committed to outreach, giving back, and making their communities stronger. The community champion award recognizes a service provider that goes above and beyond to make their communities a better place.

Blue Valley Technologies orchestrates an annual Giving Tree to help local children and families in surrounding counties. They have given to those in need for the past 27 years.

Local community members can select a card at the BVT Home Office or at a partnering business. Cards detail a local child’s needs/wishes along with bases family needs (such as pantry items, toiletries, etc). In 2023, their generous donors helped 146 families and 442 children through the Blue Valley Technologies Giving Tree.

Customer Adoption: SC Telcom

The Customer Adoption Award is for providers that seek to ensure their subscribers are well educated on their service. These providers understand the difficult task of multi-generational marketing and communication to ensure that their customers are informed about their options, understand the latest technology offerings, and provide them with tips and tricks for making things easier.

SC Telcom offered in-person demonstrations to educate  Kansas residents on their SmartTown offerings, making the transition smoother. SC Telcom’s customer reviews highlight their dedication in explaining their services and communication with customers, and their great ability to educate these subscribers on their new services and apps. For their latest rural fiber expansion, SC Telcom combined the reach of social media and online advertising with a grassroots effort. Given the rural nature of the area and the prevalence of PO Boxes, they prioritized in-person visits to directly engage with potential customers.

Marketing Excellence: Jade Communications

The Marketing Excellence Award is given to a provider that stands apart from their competitors through marketing campaigns, leveraging social media, and communicating product or service launches effectively. This award recognizes providers that are consistently striving for new and innovative ways to message to their communities. They are throwing out the rulebook and attempting to push boundaries to create lasting impressions and differentiate their brand.

When the opportunity arose to add some flair to Alamosa’s business district, Jade was one of the first organizations to raise their hand to take on the task of designing, fundraising and executing a large-scale mural for the community.

The hashtag #AlamosaAdventurer has become a local and social media sensation, with an army of proud residents and tourists alike spreading the word about Jade. This organic marketing has allowed Jade to connect with new audiences far beyond their footprint, turning their community into their biggest brand ambassadors. This community-driven approach is central to everything Jade does. They strive to create experiences that resonate with the people they serve.

Fiber For Good: Twin Valley

inclusion for their community. Fiber for Good is a new award in 2024, highlighting the service provider that strives for an amazing subscriber experience, while keeping affordability at the forefront to ensure every subscriber has access.

Twin Valley addresses the two elements of digital inclusion, a robust broadband network coupled with affordability. Twin Valley is the largest family-owned broadband and communications company in Kansas, serving rural customers for more than 80 years. Twin Valley is on track to bring fiber to an additional 20,000 homes and businesses in the state over the next year. The company is deploying next generation fixed wireless technology in rural areas where fiber construction is cost-prohibitive, replacing limited bandwidth and low reliability copper infrastructure.

Hometown Hero: Premier Communications

The Hometown Hero Award was created this year for an organization that dives into action for their local residents. This recipient’s staff have gone to truly extraordinary measures to serve, help, and provide aid in a time of need for their community this year.

In June, Northwest Iowa experienced flooding that devastated several communities that Premier serves. Flash floods allowed only a few minutes for people to evacuate their homes, affecting hundreds of customers and Premier employees. Premier’s technicians and outside plant staff sandbagged their numerous Central locations to keep water away from their core infrastructure.

Premier technician, Aaron Howing, and his brother, Drew hopped in their boat and rescued over 30 people from the roofs of homes. Fox news covered this amazing hometown rescue.

Many Premier employees spent countless hours volunteering to help with cleanup and recovery efforts in surrounding communities. Premier staff were impacted on a personal level, as some lost their homes, vehicles and belongings. Members of the Premier Team assisted their fellow employees in cleaning out homes, removing debris and sheetrock, and donating gift cards and other necessities.

Broken Bow, OK – Located in southeastern Oklahoma, Pine Telephone decided to upgrade its video to the MG-TV solution and transitioned over four thousand video customers to the new platform in just two weeks.

Field Operations Manager Brandon Rupp said their team worked hard during those two weeks, but the InnoStream platform that powers MG-TV made it easier for them to get the job done.

Video is Part of the Pine DNA

Pine Telephone started in 1911 with a dream and a $500 loan from family and has turned into a multi- service communications provider that strongly believes in the one-stop-shop model for telecommunications. For this reason, according to Rupp, Pine Telephone has upgraded their video with the MG-TV solution from Innovative Systems. Rupp says the thought of exiting video has never crossed their minds, stating that the company believes the more services that can be offered the happier the customer, and the company is healthier.

Video Tutorials Key to Conversion Success

Rupp complimented the free library of video tutorials to help Pine’s customers navigate the upgraded video service. He said when you have older customers a video learning tool like this makes it much easier and appreciates them as a value-add from Innovative Systems to their video operators.

What the future holds in the video space is anyone’s guess, but Rupp says Pine has no plans to exit video and will likely look at a migration from IPTV to live streaming in the future.

About Pine Telephone

The Pine Family Companies services over 4000 customers with TV, Telephone, Cellular, and Internet at 5 business locations across Southeastern Oklahoma.

About Innovative Systems

Innovative Systems is a leading vendor of solutions for North American communications and utility providers with over eight hundred deployed systems. eLation, our BSS/OSS solution, includes integrated billing, provisioning, mobile apps, financials, and mapping. MG-TV is our one-platform approach to video solutions such as Middleware, VOD, Cloud DVR, Restart TV, HLS Live Streaming, Conditional Access, and set-top boxes. The APMAX platform provides enhanced voice and hosted business solutions. The Innovative Systems Print Division is a full-service printing company specializing in print services for the telecommunications and utilities industries. For more information, visit, www.innovysy.com

For media inquiries contact Scott Meyer, Director of Marketing, scottm@innovsys.com

“Since partnering with Innovative Systems, we have integrated every aspect of our business and streamlined our processes. Tasks that used to take days now take hours’, according to Jeremy Carroll, MMU General Manager. “MMU is able to manage 140 miles of fiber, 60 miles of natural gas pipeline, a high voltage transmission system and a 6 MW generation plant with one software.”

“Manning Municipal has taken full advantage of eLation functionality, particularly as they grow their fiber network. eLation features are designed to make construction management, network planning, and customer turn-up simple and efficient. For utility providers like MMU, using eLation ensures that their customers will continue to receive the same quality of service across products and services,’ according to Brian Weis, Director of Customer Success, Innovative Systems.

About Manning Municipal Utilities
Manning Municipal Utilities’ mission is to provide customers with safe and reliable services at the best overall value. We are dedicated to meeting our customers’ needs, providing exceptional service, while helping to make the community a better place to live, work and play. MMU has a vision to offer exceptional service to all customers through the use of new and progressive technology, while remaining respectful of resources, finances, employees and the communities we serve.

About Innovative Systems
Innovative Systems is the leading enterprise software for broadband providers to help simplify operations, drive revenue growth, and provide a surprisingly great customer experience. Our platform includes eLation, a market-leading Billing & Subscriber Management Platform (BSS/SMP), InnoStream Multi-Generation TV (MG-TV), a streaming Video solution, and APMax, a hardware and software Voice over IP (VoIP) platform. Innovative Systems is proud to support Telecom, Electric Co-op, Municipality and Utility Service Providers nationwide. For more information, visit www.innovsys.com.

Las Vegas, NV – Innovative Systems named Partner of the Year by Calix at the ConneXions Innovation and Customer Conference this week in Las Vegas. Innovative Systems enables connectivity for Broadband Service Providers with enterprise software across Billing, Subscriber Management, Video, and Voice services.

“This award recognizes the incredible results our shared customers have achieved throughout the year. The automation you provide small broadband service providers allows nimble teams to create outsized subscriber experiences. Jade Communications alone saw customer turn-up time reduced from 20 minutes to a matter of seconds. Your eLation platform allows BSPs to increase data visibility with new self-service methods and decrease the number of billing-related support calls,” according to Stephen Eyre, Vice President, Calix Partner Community.

Austin Monahan, Chief Revenue Officer, Innovative Systems, shared that “Innovative Systems is proud to be named the Calix Partner of the Year. Our software was built to help broadband providers automate manual processes to simplify operations and fuel growth. This functionality is enhanced by a robust set of integrations across the Calix platform. As a result, our mutual customers can scale rapidly, slash truck rolls, and dramatically decrease turn-up time so they can focus on providing the best subscriber experience.”

We are excited about the path ahead and look forward to continuing to innovate with Calix as a key partner.

Austin Monahan, Chief Revenue Officer, Innovative Systems

About Innovative Systems
Innovative Systems offers enterprise software for broadband providers. We help simplify operations, drive revenue growth, and provide a surprisingly great customer experience. Our platform includes eLation, a market-leading Billing & Subscriber Management Platform (BSS/SMP), InnoStream Multi-Generation TV (MG-TV), a streaming video solution, and APMax, a hardware and software Voice over IP (VoIP) platform. Innovative Systems is proud to support Telecom, Electric Co-op, Municipality and Utility Service Providers nationwide. For more information, visit www.innovsys.com.

About Calix (NYSE: CALX)
Broadband service providers of all sizes leverage the Calix platform and teams to simplify their business and excite their subscribers to grow the value of their business and for their communities for generations. The democratizing power of the platform and portfolio of managed services enables them to operate efficiently, acquire subscribers, and deliver exceptional experiences. Calix is dedicated to driving continuous improvement in partnership with our growing ecosystem to support the transformation of our customers and their communities.

Woonsocket, SD – Santel Communications, a long time IPTV provider this month launched a full-channel live streaming service for their cooperative customers in central and southeast South Dakota. General Manager Ryan Thompson says the desire of the cooperative’s board of directors is to continue providing video service for its members, of which approximately 2000 of them subscribe to Santel’s IPTV service. Thompson related that Santel has been able to keep video at a profitable level, and for this reason the board wanted to invest in the delivery of live streaming to future-proof the product. Another reason for the new streaming service delivery relates to aging set top boxes, and the ability to shift the customer into using their own streaming device as a replacement. Thompson says over the next two years instead of a truck roll to all those homes versus just switching customers over to their Amazon or other consumer device will be easier for the customer, and much less expensive for Santel as a company.

The new streaming service provided by Innovative Systems MG-TV Live Streaming will also give Santel the opportunity to promote their fiber internet and move customers into higher speed packages that also includes their managed Wi-Fi service. Thompson believes that customers needing multiple OTT services like Paramount+, Hulu, Netflix, and Disney+ have caused a lot of their cooperative members to realize that a service like SmartStream offers much of that same content on one platform, with one bill. Stockholder pressure on the national OTT providers to start making money is creating increased parity when it comes to pricing, which according to Thompson will make their local service more price competitive.

About Santel Communications

Santel Communications delivers high-speed Internet, digital television, wireless and business solutions. Serving approximately 4,000 members in central and southeast South Dakota, Santel is also a part-owner of SDN, a statewide fiber network that connects Santel to the world and provides business-class services to major enterprises, government agencies and wireless networks throughout South Dakota and the surrounding states.

About Innovative Systems

Innovative Systems is a leading vendor of solutions for North American communications and utility providers with over eight hundred deployed systems. eLation, our BSS/OSS solution, includes integrated billing, provisioning, mobile apps, financials, and mapping. MG-TV is our one-platform approach to video solutions such as Middleware, VOD, Cloud DVR, Restart TV, HLS Live Streaming, Conditional Access, and set-top boxes. The APMAX platform supplies enhanced voice and hosted business solutions. The Innovative Systems Print Division is a full-service printing company specializing in print services for the telecommunications and utilities industries. For more information, visit, www.innovysy.com

For media inquiries contact Scott Meyer, Director of Marketing, scottm@innovsys.com