Wikstrom Telephone Company celebrates 75 years of service and technological advancement
Ingrid Harbo, Grand Forks Herald
4 min read
Jul. 9—KARLSTAD, Minn. — The Wikstrom Telephone Company, based in Karlstad, Minnesota, is celebrating 75 years in fast-changing and transformative industry.
The family-owned business, which provides phone, television and internet services for towns in northwestern Minnesota, was started in 1947 by George Wikstrom Sr. Today, his son Curtiss Wikstrom serves as the president and general manager of the Wikstrom Telephone Company, widely known as Wiktel, and takes pride in the service his family provides in the region.
"You can't go anywhere and get better service than what we have," said Curtiss.
Prior to founding Wiktel, George Wikstrom Sr. was a farmer. In 1946, George and his wife, Dolores, purchased the Northwestern Minnesota Telephone Company for $4,500. They took possession of the company on Jan. 1, 1947, renaming it Wikstrom Telephone Company. At the time, the company had 285 subscribers. Today, the company has around 9,200 customers.
Curtiss was just 3 when his family purchased Wiktel. He had three siblings, who at the time ranged in ages from 3 months old to 9 years old, and another brother was born in 1948 and another sister in 1951. All of the children were involved in the family business early on, said Curtiss, climbing telephone poles and operating the switchboard. Most of his siblings still serve on the company's board of directors.
Since 1947, telephone technology has evolved from operator-controlled switchboards, to digital phones, to today's Internet Protocol telephony, which relies on broadband internet.
"I have lived through the majority of the technical progress in the world — in the millions of years it's been here, I've lived through most of it," said Curtiss. "That's especially true of the telephone."
To keep up with the changing technology, Wiktel evolved. In the early 1970s, all phone lines in the company switched to dial service. In the decades that followed, the company started installing fiber optic cable for the internet.
While customers can still get telephone and television service through Wiktel, the bulk of the company's business is broadband internet.
"It's more important than telephones are, but we still have telephones and we still are operating to try to keep our service available throughout the area," said Curtiss.
According to Curtiss, this summer, most Wiktel customers will be connected to broadband internet via fiber optic cables. Carrie Taggart, Wiktel office manager, says this achievement is the result of the Wikstrom family's dedication to customers.
"A lot of what Wikstrom's has done hasn't been because they had to — it's because they wanted to, even the fiber into the homes in all of our small towns," she said. "This wasn't anything the FCC has provided assistance for or anything like that. They just knew that's what they wanted to see."
Wiktel also provides mobile communications companies with a backbone network for data. Taggart explained that companies like AT&T and Verizon used to just rent out cell towers, but now more heavily rely on Wikstrom's fiber technology to provide service to the area.
Wiktel's area of service stretches from East Grand Forks to Angle Inlet in the Northwest Angle. Within that range, there are four main systems that operate independently of each other. That way, if lines went down in Karlstad, people in Roseau could still call each other. Curtiss says the local, decentralized system will keep emergency communications working in northwestern Minnesota, even in a disaster.
"Our philosophy is to continue to make sure that everybody can call each other in our local area, even if the world goes crazy. And it can go crazy," he said.
Curtiss served in the Air Force in the late 1960s and early '70s. He and his brother Neil, who was in the Army, both served in Vietnam. His experiences in the Air Force have made him aware of the threat of nuclear war, and he is especially wary since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
"When I was in the Air Force, I actually rode on top of nuclear weapons," he said. "I mean, I was within a few minutes of dropping bombs somewhere else in the world, and it's gone back from that. It went down from that, and now it's coming back."
He says in the case of nuclear war, the decentralization and redundancy of Wiktel's network would allow emergency communications to continue in the area.
Having seen firsthand the advances in communication technology in the last 75 years, Curtiss expects the technology to continue to change in the future. He's optimistic that technology will change the way people live for the better. Already, he notes that the ability to work, go to the doctor and attend school through the internet has cut down the need to travel, which he believes could help save energy and cut costs for people.
"As long as we don't have excessive government regulation and control, and let people be free to innovate and make things work, the world's not going to come to an end," he said. "It's going to just get better if we leave it alone and let people be free."
Wiktel plans to formally celebrate its 75th anniversary during Karlstad's annual Moosefest, this year on Aug. 12-14, with an open house.
