Norvado's History
Chequamegon Communications Cooperative, Inc.
- In 1950 a group of residents in Cable joined to form Chequamegon Telephone Cooperative Inc.
- August 1952, six companies had been purchased in Brule, Cable, Port Wing and Waino-Oulu.
- July 1954, Chequamegon received authorization to provide service to the Village of Clam Lake.
- 1965, Chequamegon had grown to include exchanges in Barnes, Brule, Cable, Drummond, Grand View, Namakagon, Clam Lake, Port Wing and Waino-Oulu.
- 1971, the Iron River exchange was purchased from Dahlberg Light and Power Company, which brought us to a total of 12 exchanges.
- 1976, Cable area had outgrown the small switchboard that had been a part of the headquarters building. We then purchased a piece of land east of Cable on which to build a new central office.1976, also saw the total conversion of all lines to single party service.
- 1977, the patronage refund was issued to members who had accumulated capital credits in the cooperative.
- 1980, Digital switching equipment was first installed.
- 1989, Purchases of Benoit and Cornucopia exchanges brought our service area to 1500 square miles.
- March 1993, Madeline Island Telephone Company was purchased and by November the entire plant was rebuilt.
- August 1994, Maple Telephone Cooperative was purchased.
- September 1995, CTC provided local dial access to the Internet.
- May 1997, CTC offered Long Distance (CLD) to all subscribers.
- August 1997, Transmitter was installed in Duluth to expand our paging services.
- September 1997, Retail store opens in Ashland.
- September, 1998 Chequamegon branch is opened in Hayward.
- 2002, Chequamegon Telephone Cooperative’s name changes to Chequamegon Communications Cooperative.
- May 2003, the move to the new Cable office was completed and we are located at 43705 US Hwy 63 in Cable WI.
- Summer 2009 Began installing Fiber To The Home Project(FTTH). Fiber to the home (FTTH) is the only technology that will deliver enough bandwidth reliably and at an economical cost to meet the demands of our customers.
- January 2011 Chequamegon Communications/Cheqtel name changes to Norvado. Norvado is derived from “North" and “Vado,” which is Latin for “with haste” (speed).
- In addition to providing telephone service, we sell, install and maintain alarm and surveillance systems, dial-up Internet, DSL, cable TV, paging services and we added a full line of computer and network products and services for residential, business and schools.
