An early phone system at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha was the basis of today's broadband network.

The federal government's decision in 1948 to locate the Strategic Air Command (SAC) near Omaha was a key reason that Omaha became a state of the art communications center.

SAC (now U.S. Strategic Command) had a mission to lead U.S. military operations in the event of a nuclear war. They needed the most advanced communications system possible. As a result, the local telephone company installed an incredibly large and complex telecommunications infrastructure, staffed with people who knew how to run it. It built a communications network that could stand up to a nuclear blast. Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc. was the construction company that dug the trenches and laid the cable.

Eventually, Kiewit realized that businesses might want access to all that bandwidth, too. For a risky $10 million they build a high new high capacity telephone network in 1987. By 1992, Omaha became one of the first cities in the U.S. to receive a fiber optic cable network. Omaha was wired with fiber optic loops and major trunk lines supporting the telemarketing operations.

But this history has not always been rosy. Omaha community leaders were concerned when Level 3, the fiber-optic company, moved to Denver in 1997. Local business leaders responded by raising $47 million for an info-tech institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Later, Joe Ricketts, founder of Ameritrade, contributed $1.5 million for another institute at Creighton University.

Today, Omaha still has some of the most advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the nation — both in terms of equipment and people.

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