Plains Cellular was founded in 1990 for the purposes of bringing 21st Century wireless communications to the 19th century world of the eastern Colorado plains.

Our owner, Dr. Phil Magroin, was a urologist in East Piscataway, New Jersey but was tired of the life he led in the hustle and bustle of the east coast, only a short drive from New York city.

As a child, he had always dreamed of becoming a part of the wild, wild west. As you can see from the photo at right, circa 1947, the lure of the west was never far from his mind.

One day, he was approached by an odd looking fellow in a very expensive suit who asked him to sign a large stack of paperwork and cut him a check for $55,000. Believing he was disposing of another in a string of malpractice suits, Dr. Magroin signed on the dotted line, cut the man a check, and thought no more about the matter.

Amazingly, almost a year later, he found himself the owner of one of the new Rural Service Area licenses awarded in a lottery by the Federal Communications Commission.

After discovering that his newly acquired asset was in Colorado, he dumped his second wife of twenty-three years, bought a new Mercedes, and moved to Burlington, Colorado to begin building his dream.

The recent picture, at left, shows our illustrious founder enjoying a moment with his modest flock of carrier pigeons in front of his newly installed private lake on his estate 15 minuted outside Burlington.

He quickly began work on lining up the finest experts in the world to help him build the finest communications network eastern Colorado had ever seen.

With financing and infrastructure equipment supplied by the nice people at Novo-Tel, ground was broken for the first cell site installation on October, 25th, 1991. Unfortunately, the second site would not begin construction until the next May when when the snow began to melt.

The delay was not entirely without it's advantages, however. That winter, while trying to avoid severe boredom, the good doctor agreed to help chaperone a sock-hop at the local high school. It was there he met, and fell in love with his current wife, Candy, shown in a recent photo at right. Candy now owns 50% of Plains Cellular.

"I'm so proud of my boopsey," Candy professes. "Before he moved out here to be with me, all he did all day was tell people to pee in a cup. Now look at him! He's one of the bestest leaders in our community. I just wish he would spend more time with me and less time with those stupid birds."

Anyway, once those equipment guys finally got the system operational. Dr. Magroin, set about finding the most highly qualified personnel to help him operate his new cellular system.

The first man he signed on board was Moe Lester, seen at left at a recent fund raiser for the local orphanage. Moe came to Plains Cellular with a list of skills that Dr. Magroin had only dreamed of and after only one meeting at the local saloon, he knew he had met the man that would be his general manager.

"Dr. Magroin is the most magnanamous person I've ever met," says Moe. "He gave me a chance when no one else would even get near me. He told me to get started right away. I had just been released, so I had to find an apartment, which was tough because everybody knew who I was. Small towns can be so gossipy.

"Luckily, I knew quite a few young men from previous experiences and was able to get a couple of salesmen and installers right away. The rest is history."

Now, on the cusp of the 21st century, Plains Cellular is about to upgrade it's network to a state-of-the-art digital system. The old switch will be removed in only a few months. Service interruption is expected to last for only a week during the change-over.

"We're sorry that we're going to have any interruption at all," Dr. Magroin says, "but those guys that installed the original equipment afixed it to the floor with super-glue. We're expecting to have to pour new concrete after the jackhammers get through in there. Bunch o' idiots!

"But everybody needs to know that when this thing gets finished, we'll have the best damn system west of the Mississippi, and nobody's gonna be able to say otherwise."

So welcome to the 21st century, eastern Colorado.