Founded in 1903 when investment bankers Charles and Frank Bills came to Lincoln, Nebraska to compete with Nebraska Bell. With legal counsel from attorney Frank H. Woods Sr., the company adopted the then-unproven Strowger automatic dial system — Nebraska's first dial installation and one of the ten earliest in the United States. No one outside the company believed it would work; after Lincoln proved it successful, nationwide dial adoption followed. Under the Woods family's leadership spanning three generations, LT&T achieved the highest telephone saturation rate in the country by 1925 and grew to serve over 83,000 phones. The company remained independent for 96 years before being acquired by Alltel Corporation in 1999.
