Illinois River 20 miles (32 km) of its course, the Illinois is separated from the Mississippi River by only about five miles, by a peninsula of land that makes up Calhoun County. The Illinois joins the Mississippi near Grafton, approximately 25 miles (40 km) northwest of downtown St. Louis and about 20 miles upstream from the confluence of the Missouri River and the Mississippi. South of Hennepin, the Illinois River is following the ancient channel of the Mississippi River. The Illinoian Stage, about 300,000 to 132,000 years ago, blocked the Mississippi near Rock Island, diverting it into its present channel. After the
Big River Telephone add full-featured residential and business telephony services to their existing customer base quickly and efficiently. Big River Telephone provides back-office platform support, network connectivity for voice traffic, support for operations and marketing and technical support. Currently Big River Telephone is providing back-office support and service to cable operations in Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Minnesota, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Texas, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, and Georgia. Big River Telephone Company operates a network of class 4 and class 5 switches. To ensure reliability and security, Big River has implemented Class 5 VoIP switching technologies by MetaSwitch.