There’s a lot to be said for Nebraska’s largest city, but high-speed internet isn’t exactly one of them. Check out CNET’s top picks for providers in Omaha.
There’s a lot to be said for Omaha, Nebraska — the affordable cost of living, great music scene, low unemployment — but high-speed internet isn’t exactly one of them. While Omaha has the 39th largest population in the country, its median internet speed is 67th with 191 megabits per second download, according to Ookla. That’s still plenty of speed for most households, but many residents are stuck picking between just two internet service providers, and one of them is probably a fixed wireless option that’s available pretty much everywhere.
While fiber options are harder to come by in Omaha, fast cable internet is available virtually everywhere through Cox. If you’d rather try out one of the upstart 5G home internet providers, Verizon and T-Mobile are available in the area and they both offer deep discounts for their cellphone customers.
Best internet providers in Omaha
For a long time, Cox has been the only company offering high-speed internet in the Omaha area. Cox is still our pick for the best internet provider in Omaha, but now you’ll have a few other good options to compare it with.
Note: The prices, speeds and features detailed in the article text may differ from those listed in the product detail cards, which represent providers’ national offerings. Your particular internet service options — including prices and speeds — depend on your address and may differ from those detailed here.
Speed range
25 – 2,000Mbps
Price range
$40 – $100 per month
Our take – Available at nearly every address in the city, Cox is the dominant ISP in Omaha and the only cable internet provider.
Our take – Quantum Fiber (formerly known as CenturyLink’s fiber service) provides download speeds up to 940Mbps, doesn’t require a contract, and offers unlimited data on all of its plans.
Our take – If you want to try something other than Cox, T-Mobile is a great option for smaller households. It’s a 5G home internet provider, meaning T-Mobile uses its network of 5G/4G LTE cellular towers to beam high-speed internet to your home.
All available Omaha residential internet providers
Internet options are fairly limited in the area, but you do have some choices beyond our top three picks. Here are some of the other Omaha internet providers you can check out.
Nextlink: Serving about 46% of Omaha households, Nextlink is a decent option for fixed wireless internet in the area. Its plans start at $50 per month for 25Mbps and go all the way up to 500Mbps for $140. You can also add on home phone service to any Nextlink plan.
Satellite internet: No matter where you live in Omaha — or anywhere in the country for that matter — you’ll have access to satellite internet. That said, it should be viewed as a last resort. Satellite internet is slower than other connection types, costs a lot more and typically requires a two-year commitment. HughesNet and Viasat used to be the only choices for satellite, but Elon Musk’s Starlink has staked out its own claim in recent years. It offers much faster speeds than the other two and doesn’t require contracts, but you’ll have to pay a hefty $599 fee upfront for the equipment. Starlink’s availability map shows that the service is currently available in Omaha.
Verizon 5G Home Internet: Verizon’s fixed wireless service is similar to T-Mobile’s — an internet connection is sent to your house through the company’s cellular network — but it’s only available to about 1 in 4 Omaha residents. There are two plans available: 85 to 300Mbps for $50 per month or 300 to 1000Mbps for $70. You can also cut those prices in half if you’re subscribed to a 5G mobile plan with Verizon. The only thing that kept Verizon out of one of our top spots was availability.
John Coletti/Getty Images
Omaha broadband at a glance
The good news is that almost everyone in Omaha has access to minimum broadband speeds of 25/3Mbps, and most people can even choose between two providers. Fiber internet is widely available, too, with about half of residents having access to a fiber provider compared to 37% nationwide.
Average price for Omaha home internet service
The average starting price for internet service in Omaha is on the high side at $58 per month. Keep in mind, you’ll still have to pay taxes on these plans and some of them come with additional equipment fees or price hikes after the first year. $58 is higher than we’ve seen from similarly sized cities like Charlotte, San Diego and St. Louis, which all come in at around $50 per month on average.
Cheap internet options in the Omaha metro area
If you want the absolute cheapest internet in Omaha, go with CenturyLink’s 200Mbps fiber plan. Unfortunately, it’s not available to many city residents and there aren’t many other options in that price range. (The one exception is Verizon 5G Home, which starts at just $25 per month when you bundle with an eligible Verizon cellphone plan.) After that, you’re looking at a lot of $50-per-month options: Cox, Nextlink, T-Mobile and Verizon.
What’s the cheapest internet plan in Omaha?
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Fastest internet providers in Omaha
According to Ookla, Omaha ranks as the 67th city in the country for internet speed, but its average speeds are still plenty for most households.
Cox, CenturyLink and Verizon are the only internet providers in Omaha that currently offer gig speeds. After that, there’s a steep dropoff to T-Mobile’s 5G home internet service, which maxes out at 245Mbps.
What’s the final word on internet providers in Omaha?
Omaha residents have less options than most cities when it comes to internet. The market is dominated by Cox’s cable internet for high-speed plans, but newcomers like T-Mobile and Verizon have introduced some more competition in the past couple years.
How CNET chose the best internet providers in Omaha
Internet service providers are numerous and regional. Unlike the latest smartphone, laptop, router or kitchen tool, it’s impractical to personally test every ISP in a given city. So what’s our approach? We start by researching the pricing, availability and speed information drawing on our own historical ISP data, the provider sites and mapping information from the Federal Communications Commission at FCC.gov.
But it doesn’t end there. We go to the FCC’s website to check our data and ensure we’re considering every ISP that provides service in an area. We also input local addresses on provider websites to find specific options for residents. To evaluate how happy customers are with an ISP’s service, we look at sources including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and J.D. Power. ISP plans and prices are subject to frequent changes; all information provided is accurate as of the time of publication.
Once we have this localized information, we ask three main questions:
Does the provider offer access to reasonably fast internet speeds?
Do customers get decent value for what they’re paying?
Are customers happy with their service?
While the answer to those questions is often layered and complex, the providers who come closest to “yes” on all three are the ones we recommend.
To explore our process in more depth, visit our How We Test ISPs page.
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