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Yes, Las Vegas NV and some of its surrounding territory was served by "Central Telephone Company", aka Centel.
In the early 1990s, United Telecom, which had purchased 50% of US-Sprint from GTE circa 1986 and had slowly acquired more of Sprint as GTE kept "pulling out" throughout the later 1980s, also bought the independent ILEC Centel. United changed its name and the name of recently acquired Centel to Sprint, the name of the long distance/etc. company it now had 100% ownership of as GTE completely pulled out by the early 1990s.
Centel's Las Vegas and all other Centel and United territory was now served by an ILEC now known as "Sprint".
In 2005, Sprint bought out Nextel wireless. At that time, it also said that it would spin-off its landline LEC functions to a new entity still to be named. Sprint-Nextel would retain Sprint LD, the cellular side of Sprint as well as Nextel, and I *THINK* the few CLEC operations which had the Sprint name.
BTW, Sprint-Canada was a venture of US Sprint and Canada's Call-Net, a Canadian CLEC and competitive LD carrier. (US)Sprint would license its name and logo for use by Canada's Call-Net. This was the situation in the later 1990s. But circa 2004(?), (US)Sprint and Canada's Call-Net seemed to have terminated or reduced their joint-venture. Canada's Rogers now owns Call-Net.
In 2006, the Sprint-Nextel began the spin-off of legacy United and Centel into the now-named Embarq. This is now the entity which is the ILEC in the Las Vegas NV Metro area, eastern North Carolina, Fort Myers and southwestern Florida (south of Verizon/GTE's Tampa/etc. area), Tallahassee FL, many other scattered parts of Florida, Charlottesville VA, scattered parts of Kansas, scattered parts of Oregon and Washington State, etc., i.e., legacy United and Centel ILEC territory.
Note that Park Ridge IL and Des Plaines IL were once part of Centel, I think that the old name was Mid-States Telephone. These two suburbs of Chicago just north of the city limits were SXS, completely surrounded by Illinois Bell's Panel and #1XB. There were special "kludges" to convert back and forth between SXS Dial Pulse signaling and Panel/#1XB Revertive Pulse signaling. By 1996 (and long after Centel's SXS in Park Ridge and Des Plaines IL was replaced with probably some kind of ESS, now Digital), Ameritech (IL Bell) bought out these two exchanges from Sprint (Centel). Today, it would be AT&T's SBC. Park Ridge and Des Plaines IL ever made it to becoming Embarq! The CLLI code for Park Ridge and Des Plaines STILL contain the letter 'X' for the seventh position character, indicative at one time of a non-Bell telco switching building!
Back to Las Vegas... at one time (late 1950s/early 1960s?), Continental Telephone (Contel) *WAS* involved in the area. I don't know if it was Las Vegas itself, or if it was one or two of the suburbs.
I have a picture of the front cover (only) of the June 1959 Las Vegas and vicinity telephone diretory. The name of the telco is printed at the bottom of the cover, Southern Nevada Telephone Company.
The coverage area is Las Vegas and also "Boulder City, Henderson, Moapa Valley". The Moapa Valley area is to the norheast of Las Vegas, and is its own local Moapa Valley Telephone Company for years. I don't know if it is still included in Embarq/Sprint/Centel's Vegas directory in more recent years, but Moapa Valley Telco does print its OWN typical rural/small town "bite sized" telephone directory.
I seem to think that in the early 1960s, Central Telephone Company (Centel) bought out Las Vegas' Southern Nevada Telephone Company. But at that time, Henderson NV became part of Continental (Contel), but was later purchased by Centel, LONG before GTE purchased Contel circa 1991.
Boulder City CO was originally the Federal Government constructed residential development for workers and family involved with the US Federal Government's Boulder (Hoover) Dam construction, and later for those government employees involved with the operation of Hoover Dam, and the I seem to think that the US Federal Governmet started the telephone exchange there. Later on (I don't know the exact year), Centel took over the Boulder City exchange.
In more recent years, there was "rate center consolidation" where Henderson and Boulder City are now part of the Las Vegas NV rate center and "billed" as such.
There are several other exchanges in southern Nevada just outside of the Las Vegas exchange area, which are now part of Embarq/Sprint/Centel. One of these as well have become consolidated into the Las Vegas NV metropolitan rate center:
Blue Diamond NV (now part of the Las Vegas NV rate center) Jean NV Laughlin NV Mount Charleston NV Nelson NV Searchlight NV
(I do NOT know if any of these were ever Continental Telephone though)
ALL of what is now Embarq (formerly Sprint/Centel) in southern Nevada is now completely local (EAS) w/r/t each other. There are NO more toll charges between ANY Embarq/Sprint/Centel exchange area in southern NV.
There are some other local telcos' rate center exchanges in area code
702 (Clark County), both within the Las Vegas (Pahrump) NV Metro LATA, and in adjacent state (Utah, Arizona) LATAs.Conversely, the Las Vegas (Pahrump) NV Metro LATA also covers a small part of southern Nye County which split off to the new 775 area code with the rest of the state some ten years ago. MOST of 775 is the Reno NV/northern NV LATA, although some adjacent states' LATAs also "spill over" into the 775 part of Nevada as well.
AT&T's SBC (Nevada Bell) has some exchanges, one of which is the host switch of Pahrump NV in southern Nye County, in the Las Vegas (Pahrump) NV Metro LATA. The LATA is #721, which is "classed" as a "Bell" LATA, however, this LATA is one of a FEW in which an independent telco (Embarq/Sprint/Centel) is the main (ILEC) intra-LATA toll provider and intra-LATA Operator Services Provider, and where Bell exchanges in the LATA (AT&T's SBC/Nevada Bell) actually *HOME* on this non-Bell tandem for (intra-LATA) toll and access functions, and this situation existed for decades prior to 1984 as well.
Also, AT&T's SBC/Nevada Bell's Sandy Valley NV (in Clark County, area code 702) has customers across the state line in California, and the CA-side of Sandy Valley (with an office code in the CA area code 760) is also included in the Las Vegas (Pahrump) NV Metro LATA.
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