New Ownership Changing Name of ARK-O to Rally

RISON - ARK-O, the parent company of Cleveland County Telephone, announced through social media this week that the business is changing its name to Rally Networks beginning this Friday, Oct. 28. ARK-O/Cleveland County Telephone was sold in March 2021 by its previous owners, Jay and Debbie Mitchell of Seneca, Mo., to Garrin Bott, who has been in the telecommunications industry since 1992 with companies in Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Oregon and Washington. In addition to Cleveland County Telephone, the sale also included the Mitchells’ other operations in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma that were doing business under the trade names of Seneca, Goodman and Ozark Telephone Companies, and SGO. “As you may know, ARK-O Broadband was purchased a year ago. With those changes, we feel our name does not en‐compass our company's views,” the statement read on ARK-O’s Facebook page. “We are excited to announce that on October 28th we will be changing our name to Rally Networks! We at Rally Networks stands for sup‐porting the local community with quality broadband and encouraging all to Rally in support of rural America.” Ken Gross, sales director for ARK-O, said the name change will be company wide, including Gott’s operations in Oregon and Washington state. Since the change in ownership, Cleveland County Telephone has taken an aggressive approach to bringing fiber optic internet service to Rison and Kingsland. In July, ARK-O held a groundbreaking ceremony at the Cleveland County Telephone office in Rison on a new fiber optic network in Rison and Kingsland. More than $3.8 million in grant money secured through  Cleveland County is helping fund the project that includes installing about 26 miles of fiber optic cable in the Kingsland area and about 21 miles in the Rison area. Once completed, the fiber optic cable will provide internet service speeds of up to 2 gigabytes (2...