ITS Telecom: Building Blue Bicycles on Demand

As a rural telecommunications company, ITS Telecom has a familiar history. The Florida-based company dates back to the 1930s, but its modern era didn’t begin until 1952 when Yvonne Famel bought the small company as a throw in to a larger land deal focused on citrus farming, waterway access and the only hotel in town. She formed the Indiantown Company to oversee several development projects and modernize the phone and water companies and bring the sewage system out of the Gilded Age into the Fabulous ‘50s.

Not for the last time did an investor such as Yvonne Famel envision a growth spurt and high times for Indiantown, only to be disappointed. The Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company was coming to nearby Palm Beach County back then and the park-like setting of this small town was sure to attract its employees. It didn’t. It took another 10 to 15 years before some printers, steel companies and citrus processing plants started moving in, offering a reason to move the phone company out of the hotel and into its own location.

If the ‘50s were the start of ITS’ modern era, the ‘70s and ‘80s introduced the pride that state-of-the-art can bring and with the addition of some fancy country clubs and planned communities in 1984 came the era of digital switching. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Indiantown grew and ITS grew with it, serving 313 square miles and approximately 3,400 homes with voice services, broadband, video and networking services.

ITS Telecommunications’ Jeff Leslie

As we all know, history tends to repeat itself. So it was in 2006 when Jeff Leslie, president and CEO of ITS Telecommunications Inc., looking at the bright future ahead said in an article, “With the enormous amount of real estate development happening in Indiantown, our most conservative estimates tell us that our subscriber base will triple, if not quadruple, in the next 10 to 12 years.”

While that is still possible, Leslie knows he can no longer count on that growth. In September of this year, his forecast was much different.

“In our small little territory, the real estate bust has really slowed things down as far as expansion. We’re virtually in a no-growth state within our area right now,” Leslie said. “We were positioning to have another 5,000 to 7,500 new homes built within two miles of our Central Office two years ago. Now the real estate developers who have survived are on hold.”

However, Leslie’s forecast and his outlook are two different things. While the real estate forecast is dark, his outlook is as sunny as the state in which he does business. And it’s sincere. All those growers turning lemons into lemonade down in Florida must have rubbed off. He seems to have a “but” for every negative driver created by the slumping economy.