Rotary Club Hears from Centurylink Official

November 17, 2015

      Rotarian Benny Fontenot was the featured speaker today (Tuesday) at the Rotary Club meeting. Fontenot is the area supervisor for Centurylink and has been with the company for over 35 years. He is charge of operations for the phone company in Evangeline Parish and portions of St. Martin and Avoyelles Parishes. He mentioned when he first came to work in 1980, there were some areas of the parish that still had party line phones.

    Centurylink  has 12 employees working in the Ville Platte office and the company every year contributes to various fairs and  festivals in the area. When he first came to work in the Ville Platte office, there were 30 employees .

    He announced that Centurylink wil be receiving federal Cat funds to extend high speed internet speed to rural areas. Construction work is now going on in rural areas to upgrade internet speed throughout Evangeline Parish. The company will be spending $10 million dollars a year for the next 5 years. The service should be turned on in the first quarter of next year.

    In other rotary news, Club President Mitch Fontenot announced:

-the Rotary Club Christmas Social is planned for December 8 at the Cazan Lodge;

-reported that the “Choices” program to encourage students to stay in school will begin in December at six schools in the parish.