Blackfoot

The story of Blackfoot begins not in a boardroom, but with ranchers and farmers in rural western Montana. In 1954, tired of sharing party-line phones, a group of residents each contributed $50 to form a cooperative. This was the birth of the Blackfoot Telephone Cooperative, named after the Blackfoot River. Their initial mission was simple: bring reliable phone service to their communities that larger companies had overlooked. The cooperative steadily grew, making its first acquisition of a smaller system in 1958. A significant turning point came in 1994 when Blackfoot acquired nine exchanges from U.S. West, a move that doubled its size and signaled a major expansion. To fund this $21 million purchase, the cooperative raised $2 million and borrowed the remaining $19 million. This acquisition spree continued, including the purchase of Cutthroat Communications in 2013, which added approximately 2,000 business customers. As technology evolved, so did Blackfoot. They began installing a fiber optic network in 1989 and launched their own internet service, Blackfoot.net, in 1999. This diversification marked their transition from a simple telephone company to a broader telecommunications provider. Today, under the leadership of CEO Jason Williams, who began his journey with the company as an intern, Blackfoot has become a regional technology provider, offering a suite of services including voice, data, cloud, and IT services across the Pacific Northwest.