It's a startling contrast.
Outside, the neatly renovated storefront on downtown Butler‘s Main Street looks much as it did in the 1930s. Inside, the latest in sophisticated telecommunications technology is at work.
The storefront and technology belong to Penn Telecom, a telecommunications company that is making significant inroads in the city and county seat.
In recent months, the company, a subsidiary of North Pittsburgh Systems, based in Allegheny County's Richland Township, ripped open an alleyway outside the Butler County Government Center in order to provide new telephone service to the five-story complex.
Now, the company is providing the same service to businesses in the downtown.
"It just makes business sense to do that," said Ernie Francestine, the company's director of sales.
"Penn Telecom has been providing service in Butler for two years, and we've been very successful, thanks to our customers," he said.
Bob Moyer, director of Butler County's Information Services, said Penn Telecom offered the county a deal that was too good to pass up.
Along with an estimated savings of about $40,000 a year for telephone service, compared to what the county had been paying to another telephone provider, Penn Telecom replaced 50-year-old telephone cables and lines leading into the government complex, he said.
The Butler County Board of Commissioners last summer awarded a telephone contract to Penn Telecom in an effort to improve the county government's telephone system.
Moyer said the old cables and lines leading into the government center were creating occasional problems in the complex, which is home to dozens of county offices and the county courthouse.
The "clean lines," as Carl Butler, the county's director of facilities and operations, described them, will vastly improve telephone service in the government center.
Similar improvements will be made to other county offices, including the Sunnyview Home complex in Butler Township, Moyer said.
The first phase of Penn Telecom's building project began last year when the company began working on an "overbuild," the industry term for installing new cables, both underground and aboveground, Francestine said.
Historically, the copper cables that carried telephone signals to and from the county government complex were rented from Sprint, Francestine said. As a result of Penn Telecom's recent construction effort, it owns the newly installed cables.
The company has taken ownership of the "last mile," Francestine boasted. The last mile refers to the technology that carries signals from the telecommunications infrastructure to and from businesses and homes.
"This really puts us in charge of our own destiny," the company official said. "We won't be paying Sprint for that piece of copper, so we'll be responsible for all service."
Stephen Noel, Penn Telecom's network engineering manager, said work already is under way to lay additional cables and lines to other parts of the downtown Butler to provide improved service to existing customers.
The company also is hoping to attract new customers, he said. In addition to telephone service, Penn Telecom also offers high-speed Internet connections, he said.
Last week, technicians were busy both outside and inside Penn Telecom's Butler location, which is home to an office and call center. They were running new lines into the location and connecting them to switching equipment.
In the call center, employees handle telephone inquiries from customers and occasionally call customers offering new services, Francestine said.
Bundles of copper and fiber-optic lines of varying sizes run from the outside of the Butler location into the downstairs of the building, where they are connected to a maze of switching devices.
Already, a fiber-optic transmission network stretches from the company's headquarters in Cranberry Township to Butler, then through Zelienople and back to Cranberry, Noel said.
This circuitous routing eliminates the possibility of one break in the fiber disrupting the whole system, he said.
Through agreements with other telephone companies, Penn Telecom also has a fiber-optic network in parts of Pittsburgh. Fiber-optic cables are used for transmitting voices, images and other data at close to the speed of sound.
Moyer thinks the county's decision to contract with Penn Telecom for telephone service will prompt other companies to consider signing on with the company.
The installation of new cables in the downtown and improved telephone service will become an important selling point, he said.
Francestine also said he sees that as an advantage.
"We think they (county offices) are getting better customer service. We think that they're getting a better deal on their monthly phone charges," he said.
"Over the years, we have established a core base of customers in the downtown area," Noel said.
Providing new service to the Butler County Government Center is an important step in expanding the company's operations, he said.
"We intend to expand throughout the year and throughout the long run," he said.
