Centel Corporation was an American telecommunications company, with primary interests in providing basic telephone service, cellular phone service and cable television service.

Centel Corporation
Company typePublic
NYSE: CTL
IndustryTelecommunications
PredecessorCentral West Public Service Co, Western Power & Gas, Central Telephone and Utilities Corp.
Founded1900; 124 years ago (1900) in Sioux City, Iowa
FounderMax McGraw
Defunct1993; 31 years ago (1993) (Acquired by Sprint, divested as Embarq, acquired by CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies)
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois (1977-1993)
Lincoln, Nebraska (pre-1977)
,
United States
Area served
North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, Nevada
ProductsTelephone, Cable television, Wireless
DivisionsCentral Telephone Company
Central Telephone Company of Virginia
Central Telephone Company of Texas

Early history

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In 1900, Max McGraw took his savings from his newspaper route to start an electrical repair and supply shop, the McGraw Electric Company, in Sioux City, Iowa. Over the years, McGraw's company grew from residential wiring installation to include industrial wiring, electrical supply wholesaling, and electronics manufacturing. In 1922, McGraw entered the telecommunications business with the purchase of Central Telephone and Electric Company of St. Louis, Missouri. McGraw's businesses grew rapidly, and in 1926 more than 20 separate electric and telephone companies were consolidated as Central West Public Service Company.[1][2]

Through a series of mergers, acquisitions, purchases, sales, and re-purchases, the electrical supply and manufacturing side of the business would form the nucleus of McGraw-Edison. Through similar processes, the telecommunications side would become Centel, which became the name of the company in 1982.[1]

Centel

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Centel provided telephone service through its Central Telephone Company subsidiary. Its largest coverage areas by lines installed were Las Vegas, Chicago suburbs (Des Plaines, Park Ridge and unincorporated Cook County just outside the village limits of Northbrook, Glenview and Niles), Tallahassee, FL and Charlottesville, VA. It was, until the breakup of AT&T in 1984, the fifth largest telephone company in the United States after AT&T, GTE, United Telecom and Contel.

Centel also owned a stake in Keyfax, a teletext/videotex service operating in the Chicago area, alongside Honeywell and Field Enterprises. The service was discontinued by 1986.[3]

Centel sold its cable operations in 1989. Centel sold its electric operations in 1991 to UtiliCorp United.

Centel had consolidated revenues of $1.2 billion in 1991.

Centel was purchased by Sprint in 1993 for approximately $3 billion in Sprint common stock. Centel's stock was trading at $42.50 per share on the New York Stock Exchange just before the merger announcement in May 1992, but the cash value of the deal (commonly referred to as a “takeunder”) worked out to be only $33.50 per share of Centel stock. After a bitter battle with dissident shareholders who believed the company was worth more, the merger was ultimately approved by a very narrow majority, with 50.5% of the outstanding shares voting for the merger.

At the time of its 1993 purchase by Sprint, Centel provided local telephone service to 1.5 million telephone lines in seven states and was also the 10th largest cellular company with operations in 22 states. It had 9,300 employees.

Ironically, Sprint did not end up keeping either of Centel's businesses (cellular and local telephone service) that it acquired. The cellular operations were spun off in 1996 so Sprint could instead focus on providing Sprint PCS cellular service. The local telephone operations were spun off (after being combined with Sprint's own local telephone operations) in 2006 (see below).

Former subsidiaries

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b "Company History". fundinguniverse.com. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  2. ^ Clement, Edwin A. (1977). The North Carolina Telephone Story. NCITA. pp. 96–99.
  3. ^ "Keycom". iml.jou.ufl.edu. Retrieved 2022-11-22.