Message from the CEO

I recently attended a conference where a speaker said something that resonated with me: “Protecting the community from change is the enemy of progress.” It’s a simple line, but it captures something I think about often as we lead BEK into its next 75 years. Because the truth is, BEK exists because someone refused to accept that things had to stay the way they were.

Back in 1952, the year BEK was formed, roughly two-thirds of American households already had a telephone. Postwar infrastructure was expanding quickly, and phone service was becoming an ordinary part of everyday life. But in our rural communities, right here in North Dakota, families were still relying on party lines shared with neighbors, and placing a call meant waiting for a live switchboard operator to connect you. The big telephone companies had decided our communities weren’t worth the investment.

Our founders could have accepted that. Instead, a group of neighbors formed a Board of Directors, organized our cooperative, and built the telephone service themselves. They didn’t wait for change to be brought to them — they became the change. That progress is the reason BEK exists today, 75 years later.

That founding spirit still guides how we operate. From the very beginning, we’ve made a promise to bring the latest communications technology to our members, not someday, but as it becomes available, because we know what it costs a farmer, a business, and an entire community to be left waiting. That’s why we’ve grown from party lines to fiber broadband, from switchboard operators to streaming television, from a single rural telephone company to a full-service cooperative offering security, surveillance, and healthcare communications technology across North Dakota.

I won’t pretend that progress is always easy. New technology can feel unfamiliar, and change, even good change, can be uncomfortable. We understand that. That’s exactly why we’re here, not just to deliver new services, but to walk alongside our members and communities every step of the way as those changes happen.

Progress isn’t always perfect, and we don’t expect it to be. What we promise is that we’ll keep working to make sure our communities have access to the same technology that’s available to residents and businesses in the big cities. Because at BEK, we believe our communities are always worth investing in.

75 years ago, our founders decided that protecting their community from change wasn’t the answer — building something better was. As we celebrate this milestone, that’s exactly what we intend to keep doing.