Cape Girardeau, MO, January 18, 2005—Big River Telephone announces the release of a new web portal providing internet customers with a home internet site in which they have access to news, weather, and other useful internet tools and services.

The website is customizable allowing the user to adjust the weather information to display the region of their choice. The portal also features a live news feed with headlines and sports from the New York Times which will soon change to feature the St. Louis Post Dispatch. When a headline is selected, the link will take the reader to the full story.

To access the portal, internet users can go to http://portal.bigrivertelephone.com

“Our goal in creating this portal site was to provide a variety of information most internet browsers search for on a daily basis in one convenient location,” stated Kevin Cantwell, Big River Telephone.

In addition to news and weather, the portal is updated daily to provide a direct link between Big River Telephone’s internet technical support team and Big River internet customers. “The benefit of this link is to inform customers of potential viruses, scams or spyware that have been recently discovered, so the internet user can then take a proactive approach to protecting their own systems.” said Cantwell.

Big River Telephone offers a vast selection of internet access plans and has significantly increased its internet customer base with the recent acquisition of Clas.net. “This was just another exciting event in the rapid growth of Big River Telephone,” said Cantwell. “We had a great year in 2004 and know 2005 will be even greater with the anticipation of so many new technologies in the line up.”