Bluegrass Cellular

Things are going pretty good. There have been a few new towers go up. They added two new sites in Barren County. The selection of phones is a little on the dry side. Still very poor coverage of Edmonson County unless your in Brownsville or along the 31-w corridor. This area is growing because of it's location to Bowling Green. Cingular has much better coverage in Edmonson County. Bluegrass needs more signal along the Edmonson-Warren County Line where all of those new subdivions are going up. Other than that, Coverage is better than any other carrier in my opinion.

 

Anyone use Bluegrass Cellular in Muhlenberg co KY?

 

I have Bluegrass in it's easternmost area. I wanted to try CDMA and they were the only option. Pulaski Co, McCreary Co is where I travel in their area mostly. Coverage is poor at best. They've got a tower on US 27 south of Burnside that has been standing there blinking for a year and it's still not functioning. They claim to have built several towers around Pulaski and Whitley counties but I can't tell any improvement. Only 1 tower in McCreary Co and it's located badly.

With that said they're still about as good as Cell One (Dobson) who is their sole competitor in McCreary Co. Pulaski has some others but I'm not familiar with coverage.

Bluegrass doesn't even have any stores in Pulaski or McCreary or anywhere near this area that I know of. It doesn't appear they're interested in this part of their service area in the least. They don't seem to want to acquire any customers around here. Maybe too close to the edge of their service area. Something is wrong.

Meanwhile Cingular is really improving it's service in Scott Co, Tn along US 27 just south of the Ky/Tn border. Very impressive. They must have built a dozen towers in Scott, Morgan, and Campbell counties. Most all of them are working too. Their coverage along I 75 toward Knoxville is also great. I talked to a Verizon rep in Oneida, Tn a few weeks ago, Verizon being Bluegrass's partner in that part of Tennessee, and he said that Cingular is kicking their butt there. If Cell One, who partners with Cingular, would build a few towers along the US 27 corridor in Kentucky there would be no reason to have Bluegrass in this area.

 

Just an FYI, Sprint recently formed some sort of new roaming partnership with Bluegrass. They released a new PRL mainly for that purpose.

 

bluegrass is building towers east of mccreary into somerset, the area now owned by ramcell... service will greatly improve in these areas...

 

How do u get a new PRL in yr ph ?? do i have to take it in and they flash it ?

Im switching from VZW , i got my sid in and # but still roams alot i was told i need the PRL ??

 

Dial "*228"

That will get you on the latest prl....

 

i tried that , diffrent times but didnt work , it called BG the last time and a service rep picked up i said im trying to update my PRL so they tried over the PH butt it wouldnt work , i said do i need to bring it and do it on the CPU they well we arnt allowed to change carriers , soooo , found a guy who will do it for 20 bucks , shoot i got the PRL# but i cant or dont have the software to

 

Hmm, yeah the different software on the phone would affect that....I think it will be fine after you have that guy flash over the software for you, you still might have to dial it after that is done though.

 

Cell One won't spend the money.

 

Since I posted a couple of things have happened in this area with regard to Bluegrass Cellular.

They've started opening retail stores. Somerset has a couple and McCreary has one. Building a free standing store in Somerset across from the super Walmart. I'd say that will give them lots of presence around Somerset. I've not seen any stores in Whitley or Laurel.

The tower in southern Burnside in Pulaski Co is supposedly working. I'm told it is but I haven't been by there and checked for myself yet. I don't know what kind of coverage it has added. I'll get up there in the next week or so and find out and post.

Still nothing in McCreary from Bluegrass or CellOne regarding towers. Both only have one tower in the entire McCreary county. So we continue to have only minimal coverage around here from both providers. Bluegrass is negotiating with the local water district to place towers on a couple of water tanks but nothing has come of that yet. One in northern McCreary and the other in southern McCreary about 5 miles from the Ky/Tn state line and both along US Hwy. 27. It'll be a long time before this helps though.

I agree about CellOne. They seem satisfied with only minimal coverage in this area. The new Bluegrass store in McCreary is a Radio Shack that also sells CellOne. I guess the store owner got tired of coverage complaints about CellOne too. I hope people don't think they're going to get a big shot in the arm with Bluegrass because it won't get much better with them. One tower in a county with some topographic challenges won't do the job.

I talked to a couple of tower guys a month or so ago and they claimed Dobson is not dead in the water in this area but you couldn't prove it from what I've seen.

 

Bluegrass is CDMA and roaming partners with verizon. however, when in the extended coverage area, you are roaming, making the unlimited plan useless. also with new store opening up, there's been heck with cingular, calls can't be made or recieved, text as well. also this is so for other carriers calling bluegrass. this is inconvenient.

Plus, the phone prices are ridiculous without much to choose from. I live in the tri county area and it goes into roam all the time. I'd much have a larger coverage area and less expensive phone.

There's now a london and corbin store. Now bluegrass has to put knox in their coverage area because when they bought the corbin location they thought it was in whitley but it was in knox. The coverage is really not that great and no one around here has it so mobile to mobile means nothing.

 

I take it you have Bluegrass!? Well when I was with Verizon and going through South Central Ky (Cave City, Bowling Green, Glasgow ect) my coverage SUCKED!! Found out ironically I was roaming/extended network with Bluegrass!! I wasn't able to do anythin but make calls. Couldn't text, send pix messages, or even use the mobile web untill i got into tennessee. Proof that Bluegrass sucks!!

 

SMS should've worked. As for MMS and Mobile Web not working, that is VZW's fault...they allow customers with PDA/laptop data plans to data roam (including on Bluegrass) but not customers with regular phones.

-SC

 

More activity by Bluegrass Cellular in my community. Since they have expanded into Pulaski Co (Kentucky) they've erected towers at Keno, just south of Burnside near Lake Cumberland and on US 27, and then south into McCreary Co at Parkers Lake near the intersection of US 27 and Ky. 90 (Cumberland Falls Road) and just recently a brand new tower that isn't yet working at Flat Rock on US 27 near the Forest Service Ranger District Office. With these additions and the earlier tower at Pine Knot on the water tank near Ky 92 they've got US 27 pretty well covered through McCreary County. They need to get some coverage east toward Cumberland Falls and west toward Monticello but all in all it's hard to complain, at least I'm not stuck in a Cellular One contract.

The only other carrier in the county is Cellular One (Dobson) which has done nothing for many years now. They have one tower for the entire county. Absolutely no reason to be anything but Bluegrass Cellular in this area.

When you cross the Tennessee state line into Scott Co the situation is reversed. There Cingular has about 15 towers in the county while Verizon has 2.