OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Country living can be a challenge when you work from home and need dependable internet to do your job.

A Sarpy County business owner worries she may be losing clients because of service interruptions. A solution lies just a few feet away, but in a First Alert 6 investigation, Mike McKnight tells us why that is being denied.

The daily delivery Marian Gramlich really needs is uninterrupted internet, and when CenturyLink installed a fiber-optic line across the street, she thought a connection would be easy.

“I don’t understand why they won’t connect us to this fiber optic line sitting right here when we live right there,” she said.

CenturyLink sent an answer to the Nebraska Public Service Commission consumer advocate. The carrier said the line that runs close by is part of a fiber overbuild to the west of Gramlich’s location. No fiber facilities are available for homes along the way like hers.

“It frustrates me why they are ignoring me. I am a CenturyLink customer for dial-up up and dial-up is history. I want the fiber optics. I need the fiber optics to run my business,” Gramlich said.

She claims a cable run under the street could connect to an underground line already in her yard that leads to the house where she has an office.

Her full-time job is coaching presenters across the country, which requires Zoom calls, many of them a week. And when they drop out, she loses clients and money.

Uninterrupted Zoom calls are so important, Gramlich said, because her public speaker coaching business has a reputation that relies on word of mouth.

“If you have the internet drop, then you are wasting their time, and I don’t want to do that. I really want fiber optics so I can connect easily with my clients and help them,” she said.

Gramlich added that satellite service can come and go depending on weather, and other internet providers are too far away for an expensive cable run. So the least expensive and most logical option, she says, is tapping into a new CenturyLink fiber line right across the street.

“To me, it’s an easy fix and I’m willing to pay, but why not, why not connect me?”

A spokesperson for Lumen, which is CenturyLink’s parent company, said they are looking into the issue.

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