Two Hardy Telecommunications directors were re-elected at the 2013 Annual Meeting of Members on Friday, October 4, at the East Hardy High School gymnasium. Each director will serve a new three-year term.
Greg Zirk, the current president of the board, will continue to serve as the board representative from Moorefield Serving Area 2. He has been on the board since 2006. Gerald Smith will return to the board as the representative from Lost River Serving Area 1. Gerald is in his 39th year on the board. Both men were re-elected by acclamation.
About 500 people were on hand for the meeting. The East Hardy High Band Boosters and FFA served a pork barbecue meal with potatoes and green beans. While people registered for the meeting, they were able to watch the new Hardy OneNet WELD TV channel, which was airing a recording of the Moorefield-Frankfort high school football game from earlier this season. Hardy began installing OneNet for customers in June, and it is now available in Moorefield and parts of Lost River and Mathias. Construction is continuing in the rest of the county.
Hardy Marketing/Human Resource Director Derek Barr said the high school game was viewable to everyone who already had OneNet, and it was a preview of things to come.
“Our partnership with WELD for the OneNet channel will bring exclusive local content to viewers that won’t be available with any other provider,” Derek said. “We’re still working out details and discussing all of the possibilities, but we hope to have more high school sports and other events, including county commission meetings and local festivals.”
WELD films and edits the content, and Hardy Telecommunications provides the OneNet channel to air it. WELD Owner Curt Durst was present at the meeting and was thanked by Hardy General Manager Scott Sherman for airing the game during the meeting. Derek said Hardy has the capability to add more local channels.
To celebrate the launch of OneNet, Hardy gave away a 42-inch high-definition television as a door prize to end the evening.
Scott told the audience that he had heard in various meetings that many other counties were envious of the fiber-to-the-home network being built in Hardy County. The OneNet network enables many business and economic development opportunities and improves an area’s quality of life, from delivering the fastest local standard broadband speeds to allowing cellular telephone companies to upgrade their local cell towers to 4G capability. Scott said Hardy was handling the data backhaul that enabled U.S. Cellular and Sprint to install new equipment and offer 4G connectivity to the area.