? best plan to cover Green Bay, Eau Claire & Minneapolis

Cingular has native coverage in Minneapolis and Green Bay but roams in Eau Claire. If your son spends more than 3 consecutive months in Eau Claire he may be in trouble as Cingular has been terminating people who have used more than 50% of their usage roaming and your son would obviously be roaming in Eau Claire.

 

Yes It does. Cingular has been cancelling people's accounts/warning them for roaming too much off network. They started this a couple of months ago and since many people have stated that Cingular gave them the boot.
I don't think there's a carrier that offers native service in all 3 locations, but there are carriers that either don't have a roaming rule or do not enforce it. Those carriers include T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon.

 

Verizon works well for me, but I don't do much traveling at all to your area so I couldn't help you with that.
Verizon does not have a roaming rule AFAIK and does NOT have 7 p.m. nights and weekends like Cingular, Sprint, USCC, ALLTEL and others. How did US Cellular work out for you?

 

No, it doesn't rellay. Not what you have said but what the customer service rep told you. Verizon and Sprint use different technologies than Cingular and At&t and so you wouldn't be able to use their towers no matter what, upgrading to the cingular plan wouldn't help. It seems that cingular just wants any excuse to move all their customers to the new network.

Anyway back to your original question, Verizon does not have a roaming rule (which means you can indefinately roam or be off their network, say on sprint or alltells), so that wouldn't be a problem. I have also heard that sprint does not enforce theirs, so they probably wouldn't be a problem either, and a good option if you still want the 7 P.M. nights and weekends as they are free with most plans.

Also, I have just checked sprints coverage maps and it looks like they do offer native serivce in all 3 areas you mentioned, Green Bay, Minneapolis and Eau Claire, so you wouldn't have to worry about roaming anyways. Hope that helps!

 

You probably haven't heard about Alltel as much because Andy and I are both from Utah, where Alltel doesn't have a market. So maybe wait until someone from your region jumps on here and they can probably give you a better view of things with some real experience. I've only heard good things about Alltel though.

Another thing to mention is that since Verizon Sprint and Altell use the same technology, they usually have free roaming agreements in place, so your coverage area basically includes most places where any of those 3 serve, as long as you use one of them! O ya, and US Cellular is also one of them, although I don't know nearly as much about them.

Here is a link to the Sprint Coverage Map for the Minneapolis, Eau Claire area:
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/c...USER<>ATR_cartState=group&bmUID=1155078412631

The dark green and orange are sprint native, and the light green is roaming where your phone should work just fine for free.

Also here is verizon's coverage viewer:
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocatorController?requesttype

 

Go with Verizon..if you get the Family shae plan..you can have unlimited calls to all phones on your plan. Thats even if you're off network ie extend network. So stating what you said Verizon would probabally be your best choice.

 

That just means there aren't VZW towers in Eau Claire...

If you go with Verizon Wireless, in Eau Claire you will be roaming for free on Alltel's network. VZW is your best bet if you get a local phone number from green bay.

Although if you are getting service in Eau Claire then go with Alltel, much better plans, just as good of service and network. In Green Bay you will roam for free on VZW i believe, but your home area is covered natively by Alltel and so is minneapolis. The rates are better and you get the MyCircle feature (which lets you call any ten numbers for free) plus the basics like mobile to mobile, night and weekend minutes free.

Now that I think about it....could someone double check native coverage in Minneapolis, I might be wrong. If Minneapolis isn't native alltel then VZW might be the best choice.

 

Take a look at Midwest Wireless....They have a 3 state plan that covers
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.......
.
http://www.midwestwireless.com/home

 

Alltel bought Midwest Wireless....back in late 2005

Nancie- As far as getting local numbers, the carrier must hold licenses in each of those areas, and depending on the policies, I believe you could get a Mpls, Eau Claire, and Appleton phone number. I'm not sure if they share an area code with Green Bay not likely but it's possible. But if they do not then you would have a different number for Green Bay then everyone else, because Alltel doesn't hold a license over Green Bay itself. Verizon does, but doesn't hold one over Eau Claire.

 

If that is the case and Alltel is native in Mpls the they would be the best choice.

Sprint's customer service is terrible. But if you go with them there network is pretty good. The dark green is native sprint service...
Eau Claire...limited coverage...

Green Bay...ok coverage...

Minneapolis...really good coverage...


I would like to point out that service in Eau Claire may not be very good, hopefully someone on the forum can tell us. It looks like it is limited to the major roads. Although Sprint will roam off of Alltel in the light green areas of the map, this could cause problem with reception as the Sprint phone will try to hold onto the Sprint network as long as it can, if you travel outside the dark green it may result in a signal, but an unusable one. If whoever is there spends most of their time in the city of Eau Claire it should be ok though. And if that is the case they can always just force a roam on their phone or travel a little further away.

Sprint may be a good alternative for you, just beware of their customer service, they are the worst in wireless. (top 5-7 companies anyway.)

 

See this post, they talk about Sprint, Cingular and Alltel in Eau Claire, although they do not talk about the potential problem I mentioned. But I believe service will be good enough there. Although keep in mind this was 10 months ago, which in the wireless biz is out of date. So the service is likely better now.

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/central-us-wireless-forum/10926-reception-indiana-eau-claire-wisconsin.html

The link doesn't seem to be working, you can copy paste it into your browser if you'd like...

"http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/central-us-wireless-forum/10926-reception-indiana-eau-claire-wisconsin.html"

 

How may lines of service are you planning to activate? Also how many lines will be at each location (at least most of the time)?

 

Actually, ALLTEL probably has the largest footprint of any carrier in UT...they just don't cover the Wasatch Front.
http://cellularonewest.com/images/maps/RC_UT_03_04.gif

To the OP: I don't think any of the carriers mentioned will allow you to get phone numbers with different area codes on your family share plan. I'm not sure if ALLTEL does or not but you should definitely consider ALLTEL as they are one of the cheapest and most customer oriented companies out there. Verizon would work well because they roam on ALLTEL in Eau Claire and there wouldn't be any switching from a weak signal to a roam signal like someone mentioned may happen on Sprint; it would just be roaming on ALLTEL the entire time(which is not a problem on VZW's side).
Sprint, though, is a great option as well. They have early nights and their plans now include free roaming, so outside of Spritn's coverage area or on your travels you won't have to worry.

 

Having had Sprint, US Cellular, T-Mobile, Verizon AND Cingular over the last 6-7 years, I have to say that Verizon seems to have worked out the best for us (we still have them - a record 3 years for us). Sprint's network was fine, but had the worst customer service I've EVER experienced.....even worse than Cingular. T-Mobile was fine but didn't have enough native coverage in Wis. As you can tell from the roster of companies we've used, we tend to move around either seeking a better deal or when someone pi$$e$ us off. Verizon for now has been good for us. YMMV.

I'm not sure you're going to get specific area numbers based in the cities you mention though. I think you have to stay within the same 'market area' or something like that. So, in your case you can get a Green Bay number and an Appleton number for example, but I think you're going to be out of luck in obtaining a Mnpls number. You may be ok getting one for Eau Claire.

If all else becomes equal, remember that Verizon is the Official Wireless Carrier of the Packers. :wink:

 

Welcome to the Verizon Family! If you get the chance, I would travel most places you want to use your phone within the next 14 days so in case something doesn't work out you can still cancel your Verizon service without early termination fees. Verizon should roam just fine on ALLTEL and other carriers while outside their own native area. What phones did you get?

 

I have Verizon and you made the right choice. I go down 94 towards Chicago and never have any issues. I live in Southern Minnesota and work in Saint Paul. Never have signal issues.

 

Hmmm, when I'm on Verizon's network it will just forward me to my Alltel voicemail no problem and it should do the same for VZW. I suppose it could be different in different areas...

 

For me while roaming on systems like ALLTEL, UBET(a small carrier in UT and WY), Sprint, USCC dialing *86 forwards me directly to my voicemail jsut like on the Verizon network. While this should work on most/if not all ALLTEL systems, if that doesn't work, then just dial your own ten digit phone number and it will also ask you to "Please enter your password".