Local Exchange Carriers

The community of Chadron has 4 local exchange carriers. QWEST is the incumbent local exchange carrier. Great Plains Communications, Mobius Communications and ALLO Communications are the competitive local exchange carriers. The QWEST central office is on a fiber ring and provides ISDN, DSL, and ADSL. QWEST has fiber in the local network and additional fiber can be installed as needed. Great Plains Communication is headquartered in Blair, Nebraska, and provides digital telephone service to the city via a dual linear tandem feed. Mobius Communications is headquartered in Hemingford, Nebraska, and is a provider for POTS, DSL, and ADSL. ALLO Communications calls Imperial, Nebraska, home and its services are POTS, DSL, and ADSL. ALLO is in the process of planning a fiber-to-the business network overbuild similar to their network in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, featuring a Metaswitch softswitch.

Qwest is the incumbent local exchange carrier for Crawford, and NT & T is the competitive local exchange carrier.

Broadband

DSL broadband services are provided by QWEST, ALLO, and Mobius via local exchange facilities and wireless by Action Communications and Sandhills Wireless. Great Plains Communications is the local cable modem provider and has an extensive local and statewide fiber network.

In Crawford, Qwest and Mobius provide DSL broadband services via local exchange facilities and by wireless.

Wireless

Cellular coverage is provided by Alltel and Viaero Wireless. The Alltel towers are located on East 2nd Street in Chadron and in Crawford, just north of the city limits. They have retail locations at Wal-Mart and West 2nd Appliance. Viaero utilizes the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) technology and has recently constructed a tower near the intersection of Highways 385 and 20. They launched service in Chadron in December 2005 and have a local retail office.

Equipment

Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) can be provided by Great Plains Communications, Grant-Miller Communications, and Manna Systems and Consulting. Great Plains Communications offers Sprint Business Systems that feature VoIP technology and local, certified Local Area Network installers.

Cable Television

Great Plains Communications offers more than 150 cable television channels, including local area broadcasters, digital music, and local weather and programming.  HDTV is also available from Great Plains Communications. 

Communications Service Providers

Newspapers

The Chadron Record, a local weekly newspaper, has 2,220 subscribers. “Your Neighbors,” a weekly shopping guide, is delivered to an additional 4,700 residents in Dawes County. Other papers delivered locally include the Crawford Clipper/Harrison Sun with 1,300 subscribers, Rapid City Journal, Scottsbluff Star-Herald, and Omaha World-Herald.

Local News Websites:

www.southernblackhillsweeklygroup.com/chadron/
www.chadrad.com

Radio

Two radio stations operate in Chadron.