 Appalachian Wireless is Appalachian Advantage. Unlimited text talk and two gigs of data for as low as $45 a month. Or if you like, get five lines on eight gigs of data for just $145 a month. Sea store for details. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless and East Kentucky Network Company. Kentucky Power has been in the news pretty frequently in the past several months. One reason has been because of a rate increase the company has asked the Kentucky Public Service Commission to approve. But another is for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic development grant money being handed out by the company. And many people who are upset over the proposed rate increase are questioning the large grants that customers are helping fund. We do have an economic development surcharge on bills. Currently, you know, customers pay a certain amount and actually people don't realize this but the shareholders then match that amount. So we get double the bang out of that. And the reason we think that's important and success has already shown it is we're able to reinvest those dollars directly in our community. Kentucky Power President Matthew Satterwhite explains the declining coal industry has cost thousands to move from eastern Kentucky, which is one of the reasons for the requested rate increase. And he says the money that helps fund the grants is needed to create new jobs and bring those people back home. And that goes into making sure our industrial parks are strong enough that they can compete with all the other states. It goes to sending economic development directors from our different counties to economic development school. What we found is that someone comes in and they're from overseas, they don't have the difference between Kentucky and Kansas. And we just didn't have a consistent way to educate everyone to make sure we start off on a strong footing to really get people to the second meeting. He says by getting new business to locate here, the issues surrounding the requested rate increase will solve themselves. At the end of the day, you talk about rates and you say, how are we going to get past this? How are we going to stop having rate cases? Well, it's not by having more and more customers leave. We have to have more and more customers come in. We have to have businesses come in. We're all in this together. We're an eastern Kentucky company. We're not the disease. The disease is the economy, but we all need to work together and stop pointing at each other internally and row in the same direction and get out of this. Tomorrow, Kentucky power President Matthew Satterwhite will discuss the rate increase that his company has asked for and he'll address many of the questions that customers are asking. In Pikeville, I'm Shannon Deskins for EKB News.