About Us
We’re Pattersonville Telephone Company,
Pattersonville Telephone Company was an experiment, and we like to think of it as a happy accident. In 1900, John Ennis & Frank Patterson strung a line between their homes to test out a gadget – the telephone – that was common in urban stores but hadn’t quite made it to rural areas.
The community doctor and grocery store connected too. Then word got around, as it does in small towns, and a company was born. For 75 cents a month, anyone could connect to a single wire telephone system. By 1902, the company was official – and John Ennis & Frank Patterson had created a fledgling telephone company. In 1910, the single wire was gone, and Pattersonville had connected with another company – the American Telephone and Telegraph Company to carry out of town calls, all for a $1.50 a month. In 1940, Jon Ennis & Frank Patterson retired, leaving the company to grow on its own.
In ‘42, PTC moved to its current location in Rotterdam Jct, giving the area its first modern dial equipment outside Schenectady. When the new tech was rolled out to the town, our 300 subscribers made more than 8,000 outgoing calls in 18 hours.
Though we’re a small independent company, we’ve strived since the beginning to be a front-runner in the industry. In the 50’s we established local calling to Schenectady and by ‘61 that was expanded to include Amsterdam. By then we’d expanded our network, reducing the number of subscribers per line from 10, to 5. In 1963 we were given a radio license to operate 2-way radio, and established the first connection between us, and Capital City. But we didn’t stop there.
As telephone technology has grown, so have we. In 2000, we began offering dial-up, and we’re proud to announce the next chapter of our journey. In 2017 we were awarded a grant from the New NY Broadband Program to deliver High-Speed internet to Unserved & Underserved areas. This grant, along with our company investment, will connect 170 households to a faster network with Fiber Optic cable. And that’s the Pattersonville way. We’ve always looked towards the future and created endless opportunities to serve our community with new technologies & superior customer service. And we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
