This video makes a compelling case for why your home should have a landline, especially if you are elderly or have children.

High school seniors who live in a household served by Alliance Communications are eligible to apply for a $1,000 scholarship.

Alliance Communications will award $1,000 scholarships to graduating seniors from each of the following school districts that Alliance serves:  Alcester-Hudson, Baltic, Brandon Valley, Garretson, Hills-Beaver Creek, Howard, Oldham-Ramona, Tri-Valley and West Lyon. Students who attend a school not listed below, but are Alliance customers, are eligible to apply for the school district respective to their service area.  Also, up to two additional $1,000 scholarships will be awarded to a student pursuing a degree in the telecommunications field. 

The applicant’s household must be current customers of Alliance Communications, and the applicant must plan to be a full-time student in the fall. 

The Alliance Communications scholarship program is based on merit. Applicants are judged on leadership in school, civic and other extracurricular activities, academic achievement, character, and the motivation to serve and succeed.

The deadline to apply is March 16, 2012. Applications are available here.

Alliance Communications is in the process of negotiating retransmission fees with local affiliates of national broadcast networks (e.g. KSFY, KELO, KDLT, Fox and KCAU). Local affiliate stations in Sioux Falls and across the country can charge fees to satellite and cable television providers, like Alliance Communications, for retransmitting their programming.

Our goal is to negotiate a fair price to you, the customers. There is a direct correlation between the cost of retransmission fees and prices customers pay in their monthly bills. Unfortunately, broadcasters have immense leverage in the negotiation process because they can threaten to shut off access to content that viewers have come to expect. Although we remain optimistic that the negotiations will be achieved without customer impact, there is a possibility that unresolved negotiations may lead to service disruption.

Retransmission agreements must be reached by December 31, 2011, or local station owners will require Alliance to drop them from our channel lineup. We will keep you updated on our progress, especially if it appears that there will be an impact on services.

In honor of our cooperative expansion on January 1, 2012, Alliance Communications is airing three television commercials on its cable system. These commercials highlight the benefits of belonging to a cooperative. You may even recognize some of the people in the commercials.

Click the Read More button to watch the videos!

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System on November 9, 2011 at 1 p.m. central standard time. The alert will be transmitted throughout the country.

The purpose of the test is to assess the reliability and effectiveness of the system in alerting the public.

The EAS is often used by state and local emergency managers to alert the public about emergencies and weather events. The system provides the ability to send messages regionally or nationally, though it has never been tested at these levels. A major disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami could require the use of the system to send life-saving information to the public.

Although local and state components of the EAS are tested on a weekly and monthly basis, there has never been an end-to-end nationwide test of the system. FEMA and the FCC need to know that the system will work as intended should public safety officials ever need to send an alert or warning to a large region of the United States. Only a complete, top-down test of the EAS can provide an appropriate diagnosis of the system’s performance.

Although the nationwide EAS test may resemble the periodic monthly EAS tests that most consumers are familiar with, there will be some differences in what consumers may see or hear. During the test, the public will hear a message indicating “this is a test.” The audio message will be the same for everyone; however, due to limitations of the EAS, the video test message may not be the same and may not indicate “this is a test.”

We anticipate that the test will last approximately 30 seconds.