In February of 1951, more than 400 farmers from Ramsey, Towner, Cavalier, Nelson, and Benson counties met in Devils Lake, ND to discuss forming a rural telephone cooperative. An 11-man organizing committee was elected.

The organizing committee met again April 6, 1951, at the county agent's office in Devils Lake and decided on the name United Telephone Cooperative. The committee also made plans to submit a loan request for $3,750,000 to the Rural Electrification Administration.

Representatives of the proposed cooperative met in Jamestown, ND July 11th and 12th, 1951 with representatives of similar organizations to discuss service territories.

The organizing committee of United Telephone had discussed purchasing the Central Telephone Company at Devils Lake and on January 27, 1952, brought the proposal to the public at a meeting by the Devils Lake public utilities rate committee. About 150 people attended the meeting at which rate increases wanted by Central Telephone Company were to be discussed. A committee was assigned to discuss the proposal with Central Telephone Company.

The proposal met with a good deal of resistance within the Devils Lake community because of anti-cooperative feelings. United Telephone Cooperative was unable to purchase Central Telephone Company and subsequently abandoned hopes of establishing headquarters in Devils Lake. Headquarters were to be established in Langdon, ND.

On March 26, 1952, members of the Cooperative met at the Memorial Building in Devils Lake and adopted the name United Telephone Mutual Aid Corporation. A board of directors was elected. The organization filed Articles of Incorporation on April 4th, 1952.

A $411,000 loan to United Telephone was approved by the REA on October 12, 1953. The loan was to be used to purchase the exchange at Langdon from the North Dakota Telephone Company and twelve farmer-owned lines and to upgrade service to modern dial.

United Telephone purchased the Langdon exchange on March 2, 1955.

On January 14, 1957 REA approved a loan in the amount of $451,000 for the purchase and upgrade of the Osnabrock Telephone Company, the Milton Telephone Company, the Sarles Telephone Company, the Hannah Telephone Company and eight farmer owned lines.

On June 21, 1958, the Langdon exchange became the first in the United Telephone system to be cut over to modern dial service. During the next two years, dial exchanges at Sarles, Milton, Wales, Munich, Walhalla, Rock Lake, and Egeland were established. The Egeland exchange was the last to be cut over February 5, 1960

In 1968 United installed direct dial equipment and began offering 1+ dialing.

In 1970 a facilities upgrade was started to bury all of the rural plant facilities and upgrade service to single party lines and was completed in 1977.

In the 1970's United worked with the Department of Defense to establish facilities for the Anti Ballistic Missile site being constructed at the Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Complex at Nekoma, ND.

In 1975 United install a Motorola Improved Mobile Telephone System (IMTS) and a paging system.

United Telephone constructed a cable TV headend site in the community of Munich to provide cable TV service to the members. United Telephone purchased a cable headed facility from Odegards in the community of Rock Lake and upgraded the site to offer the members in Rock Lake TV service.

In 1990 United Telephone constructed two Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) TV sites with one being located at Egeland and the other located at Milton. This new service allows rural residents of northeastern North Dakota to receive a quality TV signal.

In 1990 United upgraded to an all-digital fiber optic network and installed Stromberg Carlson DCO switches.

United Telephone has established United Telephone Educational Foundation Inc. The foundation is funded by unclaimed capital credit checks. Thus, providing higher education scholarships to students whose parents or guardian receive telephone service from United Telephone/Turtle Mountain Communications.

In January 1993, GTE Telephone Operations announced that they had plans to sell their North Dakota telephone properties. United Telephone along with Dakota Central Telecommunications Cooperative located in Carrington, ND and Polar Communications located in Park River, ND formed The Phone Company (TPC), an acquisition corporation enabling the three companies to submit a bid on the 10,000 telephone access lines.

In March, GTE Telephone Operation notified TPC that they were the successful bidder for its North Dakota property. TPC formed North Dakota Telephone Company to provide service to the 15 exchanges that were purchased from GTE. On November 1, 1993 North Dakota Telephone Company began providing service to the 15 exchanges.

The TPC group along with North Dakota Telephone formed North Dakota Long Distance to provide a no frills long distance service to our subscribers. Since its start, North Dakota Long Distance (NDLD) has grown from four (4) independent telephone companies stockholder to ten (10) companies utilizing the services of NDLD.

In November of 1994 we converted switches to System Signal 7 (SS7) and began to offer advanced calling features.

We have constructed cellular towers in the Langdon, Egeland, and Rolla areas with Commnet Cellular to provide cellular communication service to the rural area.

United Telephone Mutual Aid Corporation formed a wholly owned subsidiary called Turtle Mountain Communications to purchase six (6) exchanges and 3,300 access lines from U S West Communications on June 1, 1996.

Then on March 4, 1998 Turtle Mountain Communications purchased another two (2) exchanges from U S West Communications and another 4,700 access lines.

We are also an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and provide Internet service and web hosting.

United Telephone, Polar Communications, Dakota Central Telecommunications and North Dakota Telephone have also formed ND Telecom, which specializes in special circuit engineering.

The TPC group along with Cass County Electric Cooperative, Kindred of ND has started IdeaOne, a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in the Fargo, ND area.

All of us at United Telephone Mutual Aid Corporation look forward to providing new technology and service to our subscribers.

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