Alaska Digitel on GSM 1800?!!

[ShoresGuy]

I found this by mere coincidence on gsmworld.com and am quite surprised at this. It's probably a typo but yet still striking considering that this is in the US!!

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/net_usad.shtml

USA


Alaska Digitel, LLC - Network Information

Network Information

Operator Name Alaska Digitel, LLC
Network Name Alaska DigiTel
<u>Network Type GSM 1800 </u>
Handset Code AKD
Network Code 310
Network Status Provisional Member

How can a US provider be on GSM 1800 all of a sudden? I have heard that supposedly D.C. has a limited GSM 900 network for the foreign diplomats headquartered there.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this,

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[spyder22]

I was part of the team from Omnipoint Communications that took over the old Sprint Spectrum market in DC/Baltimore. Here is the story. Yes originally it was built by APC in the 900 Mhz spectrum with the help of Omnipoint Technologies and a lot of government funding. The US government at the time wanted to see if digital cell phones would work in the US. But then changed over to 1900 mhz, by Sprint. At the time they called themselves Sprint Spectrum. Then Sprint decided to use CDMA instead, but due to their agreement with the US government, they had to keep the GSM market in DC/Baltimore up and running as a roaming only market for international users. 1999 Omnipoint Communications purchased the GSM market in DC/Baltimore from Sprint with the help of Voicestream Wireless's money. At that time we were in the midst of a merger. Let me tell you the market was in shambles when I got there in 1999. It took us over a year to repair the RBS's. We pretty much had to replace all of the doors and the HVAC systems on the cabinets. Plus the MSC and BSC's in Hanover and the MSC and BSC's in Merrifield were old Ericsson BYB202 hardware. You want to talk old...man I have never seen anything like it...LOL!! We had some serious gremlins and alarms in the system. Sprint had let the system run idle for over 3 years with out any maintenance. You know it is bad when Ericsson RTAC is stumped on alarms....LOL&gt; Also nothing was labeled...so it was one hell of a learning experience. Since the facilities in Hanover, MD were shared with SPRINT PCS, we had to move out. SO we (at this time we were finally Voicestream) built a new facility in Beltsville, MD with brand new Ericsson BYB501 equipment. As for the 900mhz gsm equipment....it no longer exists. The radios were swapped out by Sprint before they did their R7 upgrade back in I believe 1997-1998, donâ??t quote me on thatâ?¦.before my time. The only collocation that was done was done by sprint with the GSM and CDMA sites. Most of the sprint towers had both. By 2001 we had to move off a lot of them. Basically Sprint became $%#@ and didn't want out competition and forced us off of a lot of towers. All we did was drop another tower across the street of on most a second tower within the same compound ...stupid if you tell me. But I am an engineer not a lawyer or CEO...... So that is the story.... nothing too exciting...except a lot of name changes. I hope this helps. Feel free to email me at spyder1375@hotmail.com
I typed this pretty quickly so please excuse any typos.

[ShoresGuy]

Wow thanks Spyder [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

That is some story. But the system's no longer on 900Mhz and instead T-Mobile (when they were still VS) improved the decaying infrastructure and uses it on 1900 Mhz today, right? I'm originally from CA so Cingular/T-Mobile are using just GSM 1900 there and since Cingular doesn't have any TDMA 800 licenses in CA, the only GSM provider building a GSM 850 network will be AT&T. But my Sony Ericsson T300 will work in most of the US where there's GSM 1900 so I won't complain, a little coverage is better than none [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img].

Thanks for sharing that info with everyone. I will also post your reply over at HoFo (HowardForums.com) since I had asked the same question there in a couple threads as well.

Take Care [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

[larry]

I thought Alaska Digitel was a CDMA 1900 system. I thought I remember reading several times that Sprint had a roaming agreement with them. Am I just losing it or did something change recently?

[ShoresGuy]

Originally posted by: larry
I thought Alaska Digitel was a CDMA 1900 system. I thought I remember reading several times that Sprint had a roaming agreement with them. Am I just losing it or did something change recently?

It makes me wonder if Alaska Digitel is building up a GSM network in addition to their existing CDMA. It's even possible that they're installing GSM overlays onto their CDMA towers assuming of course that their towers are on 1900 Mhz. I could be completely wrong about this though.

[TProphet]

Alaska DigiTel is a CDMA1900 carrier, and a fairly lousy one at that. I've roamed on them (poorly) using my Sprint PCS phone. I would be very surprised if they were undertaking anything as aggressive as a GSM overlay considering the costs involved vs. the size of their markets. They have enough work to do simply covering Anchorage; they don't even cover the whole airport!

You can see coverage maps and information about them on their Web site, which is here. Interestingly, they sell a lot of phone models that Sprint PCS does not, such as Nokia phones, and they offer plans with Sprint PCS roaming. So if you REALLY want a Nokia CDMA phone, live in a Sprint service area, and don't mind having a phone number in Alaska with a really expensive plan (their pricing is less outrageous than other Alaska carriers but very pricy by "lower 48" standards), you might consider them.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]