Centel history

In 1907, McGraw embarked on a third business venture when he set up Interstate Electric Manufacturing Company, which produced magnetos, and light, telephone, and power switchboards.

In 1910, McGraw consolidated his second two enterprises into the Interstate Supply and Manufacturing Company.

In July 1922, McGraw bought the Central Telephone and Electric Company, of St Louis, Missouri.

On June 28, 1926, McGraw spun off these utility holdings into a new company, Central West Public Service Company.

Ten years later, McGraw reconfigured his holdings in the company again, splitting it into the Central Electric & Gas Company, and the Central Telephone Company, in May 1944.

The Central Electric & Gas holdings merged with the Southern Colorado Power Company in May 1961, and the company's name was changed to Western Power & Gas Company at that time.

Three years later, on October 26, 1964, the company's founder, Max McGraw, died at the age of 81.

Now, Western Light & Telephone altered its name to that of McGraw's company, Western Power & Gas, starting on July 1, 1965.

In the year following the merger, Western Power & Gas increased its holdings in its subsidiary, the Central Telephone Company, to 95 percent, and in 1967, the company transferred its Iowa and Missouri telephone properties to Central Telephone.

On June 5, 1968, Western Power & Gas changed its name to Central Telephone & Utilities Corporation, reflecting the shift in the company's priorities from gas and electric service to telephone systems.

In December 1975, Central Telephone acquired Mid-Texas Communications Systems, a small telephone company with annual revenues of $20 million.

By 1976, roughly three-quarters of the company's sales stemmed from its telephone businesses.

In January 1980, Central Telephone divested itself of its Kansas telephone operations, earning $3.6 million in the transaction.

In 1981, the group had sales of $112 million, to notch earnings of $10 million.

The company entered the business in 1982, when it purchased a minority ownership in the first operational cellular system in the country, in Chicago.

The company sold off its communications equipment manufacturing subsidiaries in June of 1984.

1987 Industry First Sprint – First nationwide, 100 percent digital, fiber-optic network is completed.

In September 1988, however, Centel beat back the hostile takeover by repurchasing 2.15 million of its shares, a quantity representing 5.5 percent of the company's stock, for $43 a share.

In November 1991, the company put its Ohio telephone operations up for sale, and five months later, they were transferred to Century Telephone Enterprises.

Renamed Nextel in 1993, the company rapidly established itself as a nationwide force in the burgeoning world of wireless communications.

By mid-1995, Nextel was on point to serve all of the nation's top 50 markets.

The national rollout of iDEN service began and the Nextel National Network was introduced in January 1997.