I know the "helpful smile" all too well. It was the only grocery store in my home town basically until I left and then I get to Lincoln and they build the biggest Hy-Vee in Nebraska about a mile from my house.
Eastern Nebraska got a new area code in 2011.
EDIT: Here's an article from 2009 that paints a pretty good picture
http://www.omaha.com/article/20090708/NEWS01/907089914/0/AP03
They are obsessed with AT&T, I've been seeing a ton of T-Mobile commercials recently (which is funny because they don't really exist in my neck of the woods) and everyone one them directly names AT&T.
A disaster? Give me a break, Apple, Samsung and everyone else are now going to have to deal with phones being "good enough" so they getting new ones less often, especially when subsides die.