Cellular One SW Pennsylvania

One question to ask of a sales person is who they (Cellular One) are affiliated with. On the west coast (calif.) they were affiliated with ATT Wireless. (50% owned by McCaw and 50% by ATT.) Within the last two years (unsure of time) ATT bought ought the interests of McCaw and is now AT&T Wireless exclusively (SF Bay Area).

In Texas, the Cellular One brand name is (was) marketed by SBC (SouthWestern Bell). Since then, across all its markets, SBC has changed the name to Cingular. (SBC has 60% ownership and BellSouth has 40%.)

Notably, in both the above scenarios, the Cellular One name was exclusively associated with TDMA technology. TDMA is going bye-bye and will blossom into the butterfly of GSM. Eventually, that too will yield to even a more secure technology: w-CDMA.

Hope this helps.

kevin

 

Kevin brings up a good point about checking what "real" company is using the Cellular One name in your market. I've been in SW PA a long time, so I'll try to explain where CellOne Fits in.

This whole discussion will be about the A-side cellular (800MHz) carriers in SW PA.

AT&T Wireless is the A-side operator in Pittsburgh itself. More specifically they operate the A-side cellular network in Allegheny, Beaver, Washington, Westmoreland, Somerset, and Cambria counties. This is their Pittsburgh market with System ID 39. (+ a couple counties in WV, and OH, but lets keep this a PA discussion)

In all of the surrounding counties, the A-side operator is Cellular One, which is run by Dobson Cellular. Dobson is one of the larger Cellular One operators in the country, with markets scattered all over.

If you are north of Pittsburgh, in Lawrence, Butler, Armstrong, or Indiana counties, this is Dobson's northern Ohio / Erie PA market (for lack of a better term, I don't know what they really call it.)

If you are to the south, in Greene or Fayette counties, this is a different Dobson market. This is an extention of the northern WV (morgantown) market.

If you are to the east, in Bedford county, this is again a different Dobson market, this time the Cumberland Maryland market.

So, the simple answer to your one question "why don't they show up as a carrier on my list" is most likely that you live in one of the AT&T counties, not a dobson county. So unless you have a primary business or home address in a dobson county, you're not going to be able to get most of their service plans. (The standard 'end users billing and primary residence or business address must be in <insert carriers name> licensed service area' type small print stuff.)

Anywhere in SW PA, you should see CellOne stores OR AT&T Wireless stores, but never both in the same county. They are using the same licensed band, so they don't overlap.

But, sometimes you will hear a CellOne ad on B-94. They are advertising to those people that live outside of the metro area... I do a double take every time I hear one of their ads on a Pittsburgh station too.

Hope this helps. Let me know anything else you want to know about service around the burgh.

-justin