Amelia to New Orleans LA Coverage

[Bsilvertab]

My dad is going to be starting working on the oil rigs leaving from Amelia. Can anyone tell what services are good. We are from Northern Michigan so all of the providers are a possibility except Nextel. We just want something that is going to work between Amelia and New Orleans.

Thanks,
Bsilvertab

[Gamer03]

Bsilvertab, I don't know about Amelia, but when we were in New Orleans this past summer we used Cingular (tdma) in New Orleans, primarily in the French Quarter, but we also used it on the Mississippi River when we took a boat from the Riverwalk shopping mall area down to were they signed the Louisiana Purchase, which is hard to see where that is since the trees have gorwn over the area. IMO, the reception in New Orleans works well.

I was satisfied with Cingular while we were in New Orleans.

FYI, New Orleans is one of a handful of cities that Cingular wireless works well in.

New Orleans is fairly flat, so all cell phone providers should work well their.

Maybe someone who actually lives in or around New Orleans can inform you of which carrier works well for them.

Just my two cents.

Hope this helps.


Gamer

[Bsilvertab]

I appreciate the responce. Im guessing and now it is confermed that all providers will work in New Orleans. I guess what I really need info about is Amelia. Thanks

BSilvertab

[COtech]

Both Alltel and Cingular would serve you well. Since you list Alltel service for yourself, a National Freedom plan could be attractive with coverage in your northern Michigan (UP?) home as well. If you'd mention your city or county and Alltel phone's NPA-NXX (areacode and exchange), I could attempt to find a Roaming Access Number to use at home with a Louisiana numbered Alltel phone. You'd have to say whether or not it's a local call. This would be cellular-A coverage from NO to Amellia.

Cingular would also give solid coverage, starting on cellular-B in NO and switching to PCS after leaving NO and St. Charles Parish. Current local plans offers dualband GSM handsets, which would find no service in the UP (work fine in the Michigan LP). The National plan would offer a GAIT phone that would work in the UP on TDMA or AMPS.

Serving Amellia and four parishes on cellular-B, but not New Orleans on the local plan, you can go statewide with MobilTel Wireless to add in NO. Perhaps your father could arrange to receive their bill at the embarcation point in Amellia? Here's their coverage.

If your father will be working two weeks on/two weeks off, and just be in Louisiana long enough to travel from airport to dock (or helipad), a local cellphone doesn't seem to make sense, to me. Only if he were in range of land based wireless, and could use those night and weekend minutes freely, would this make sense.

Your offshore service providers are Coastel Communications and PetroCom. It might be usefull getting prepaid cards from one or the other for their cellular payphones, out on the rigs.

COtech

[Bsilvertab]

Wow, those off shore phones are really cool! Yea, he is going to be going back and fourth 2 weeks on 2 weeks off. I guess I should have been more specific when I said that we can get most carriers. We have access to NPI Wireless (T-mobile affiliate-GSM), Cellular One Dobson (TDMA), Alltel (CDMA), and Sprint (CDMA PCS). Im sure I can get Verizon, ATT, T-mobile, and Cingular but I doubt they would have local numbers. GSM is spotty at best around here but works quite well in town. I believe Cellular One Dobson roams off of Cingular in spots so Cell One would be alright. I don't know why but my dad is hell bent on a flip phone. He has a v60i right now and doesn't really like it. Thats all Cell One offers for flips. Does anyone know how well Sprint works in and around Amelia? Sprintpcs.com lists it as covered but I don't trust it. They list Kaleva and Wellston as haveing coverage up here and they don't.

Thanks,
BSilvertab