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The story of Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. began in 1950, not so long after Congress approved the Rural Electrification Telephone Act, when the Lamar Telephone Company in Spencer County made a decision to reorganize and apply for a federal loan. Around the same time, the St. Marks Telephone Company was being urged to expand its service into other parts of Perry County. The officials of the two small companies decided to combine their endeavors and, after obtaining approval from the Public Service Commission of Indiana to include the St. Meinrad Telephone Company; Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative was incorporated in 1953.
St. Marks and St. Meinrad were dial exchanges and Lamar used magneto phones when the cooperative began operating them on March 1, 1953. Later in the year, the cooperative applied for Rural Electrification Administration funds to rebuild the three exchanges and provide service to many people in the area who were requesting it. The loan was granted and by late 1955 the St. Meinrad and Lamar offices in Spencer County were switched over to new dial equipment. Early in 1956, the new St. Marks dial office and the newly created Bandon dial exchange in Perry County were placed in service.
During July 1957, Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative purchased the Holland Telephone Company and the Stendal Telephone Company and received a loan from the Rural Electrification Administration to provide new facilities which were completed and placed into service in September 1959.
In the sixties, many miles of buried cable were placed into service to replace the aerial open wire lines.
By the mid-seventies, all central offices were upgraded to new electro-mechanical switching and several remote switches were added to shorten loops. This upgrade provided customers with much improved service and the availability of touch-tone service. Because of switching improvements and the addition of more buried cables, no party line had more than four customers by the late seventies. On April 17, 1979, the cooperative achieved a milestone by placing into service one of Indiana's first digital switches at the Holland office.
The decade of the eighties saw many improvements with the installation of the cooperative's second digital switch at the Santa Claus office. With the digital offices came new and advanced features called Custom Calling Features such as Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Conference Calling and Speed Dialing
The digital offices also offered a higher degree of reliability and faster, quieter connections. By 1982, all customers were cut over to private line service. In 1988 a fiber optic backbone network was constructed for the purpose of connecting the Bandon, St. Meinrad and Santa Claus central offices and to meet Indiana Bell with fiber at the Chrisney junction. In March of 1989, the Santa Claus central office was cut over to the second generation of digital switching and Bandon and St. Marks central offices received their first digital switch in August and September of 1989, respectively.
In April 1990, the Holland central office was cutover to its second generation digital switch and fiber cable had been constructed to connect it to the existing fiber backbone network. In 1992, more fiber was constructed from Bandon to the St. Marks central office to complete the fiber backbone network that is in place today for trunking.