Impact of Iowa Telecom sale 
difficult to gauge

It’s hard to know what to think about Iowa Telecom’s deal to be sold to Arkansas-based Windstream Corp. for $1.1 billion.

On the one hand, rural telecommunications companies are under ever-increasing pressure to remain viable businesses. With many Americans opting to forgo a land line and use only cellular service, carriers with no wireless option are being dumped altogether by some consumers.

“It is becoming an increasingly essential element of a rural carrier’s success that it be able to offer a wireless alternative that will satisfy customers’ demand for mobility.” Lawrence Movshin wrote in Rural Telecom Magazine. “American consumers’ use of wireless services is continuing to increase even as wired phone usage (and subscriptions) is decreasing.”

Perhaps coming under the ownership of Windstream — a company with presence in 16 states and more than 10 times the number of access lines Iowa Telecom has — could actually make for a stronger business here in Newton.

The flip side of this is, of course, the loss of another locally-based corporate headquarters.

Newton has been through this before.

Media from outside the area were quick to draw parallels between the Iowa Telecom sale and the loss of Maytag, but that’s a little bit like comparing apples to Humvees. Iowa Telecom is certainly an important business and major employer in Newton and other communities throughout Iowa and Minnesota. Maytag, however, was a way life for an entire community and there’s no way the sale of any business, even Iowa Telecom, could ever have the impact Maytag’s merger with Whrilpool did.

Still, the probability of losing another corporate headquarters out of the same building sounds pretty grim. Windstream executives have indicated they have no intention of relocating their corporate headquarters from Little Rock, Ark., to Newton, Iowa, and it’s near certain that redundant positions within the two companies will have be eliminated. How that will play out is still unknown to the community, but losing even a few high-paying jobs will hurt the community.

But then again, Windstream has said they plan to expand the call center in Newton. That could mean more call center jobs here, especially if Windstream opts to fully utilize the corporate headquarters space to it maximum potential. The big question here is: will those jobs will offset the positions that are lost? And will the new jobs be at a lower pay scale?