Blair’s Hunt Brothers Shed Some Businesses
By Virgil Larson
Blair Telephone Co., a 103-year-old family-owned phone company, four other phone service providers, a cable television company and an Internet service provider, all based in Blair, Neb., have been sold to a Charlotte, N.C., company.
Richard and Hugh Hunt and their children sold the companies. The Hunts retained ownership of several other businesses, none in the phone or cable industries.
Besides Blair Telephone, American Broadband Communications LLC bought Eastern Nebraska Telephone Co., Rock County Telephone Co., Arlington Telephone Co. and HunTel Communications, which serves Tekamah, Neb.
American Broadband also bought HunTel Cablevision Inc. and HunTel.net Inc., the Internet service. HunTel Cablevision has about 8,000 customers with Blair and Wayne, Neb., their biggest markets. The company also operates in communities between Blair and Wayne.
Organizationally, the Tekamah phone company is a subsidiary of HunTel Cablevision.
Hunt family members will leave their management jobs in the companies that were sold. Mike Jacobson, chief executive officer of HunTel Systems, the administrative arm of the family holdings, will become president of American Broadband operations in Nebraska.
The sale price was not disclosed.
American Broadband, a privately held company, says on its Web site that it buys small, mostly family-owned phone and cable systems. Its objective is to acquire 50,000 to 100,000 access lines.
The Web site said the company has completed acquisitions of four companies, two in Missouri, one in Pennsylvania and one in Kansas.
“We will be the largest purchase to date,” Jacobson said. Besides the 8,000 cable system customers, the HunTel companies have 14,000 to 15,000 telephone customers.
Not sold were: HunTel Systems; Bass & Associates, an Internet technology consulting firm; EnSite, a company that designs software for energy systems; HunTel Communications Inc., which sells telephone systems for businesses; HunTel Customer1, which sells business services from snow removal to security systems; HunTel Engineering, which services telephone companies in several states in the region; and Mid America Computer Corp., which does billing for phone companies and Professional Forms Inc., which sells business forms.
Bass, EnSite and HunTel Communications Inc. are based in Omaha, the others in Blair.
With the sale, the Hunt family has shuffled ownership of the remaining companies.
Richard Hunt, his son Dan and their families will own 100 percent of HunTel Engineering, HunTel Communications Inc. and HunTel Customer1.
Hugh Hunt and his daughter, Karen Aman, and their families will own all of Mid America Computer.
Ownership of the other remaining companies will not change, according to a press release.
Before the sale that was announced Thursday, the Hunt companies combined employed about 450 people, Jacobsen said.
The companies sold to American Broadband made up about 40 percent of the combined companies’ revenue, which in 2003 was about $50 million.
Dan Hunt and Aman are the great-grandchildren of E.C. Hunt, who started Blair Telephone in 1902. Another branch of the family owns Great Plains Communications, another Blair-based phone company.
In November 2004 the Hugh and Richard Hunt families sold a company that makes concrete-mixing equipment. Also sold in the last year were telephone operations in Hungary and Poland.
Jacobson said the sale presents the possibility of the Blair- based American Broadband companies selling services to other American Broadband holdings, which are smaller.