Cingular Extend??? - Interesting

Hmmm, could be. Of course you can always buy a Motorola and hack it so it always shows the true network name, like I did.

-Jay

 

Now that would be interesting to see if Cingular started listening to the customers & started showing when your roaming.

Unless you have been roaming too much Charlyee, and they are sending you a warning.

 

I would say, may be Cingular turned that on for you to let you know that your usuage for the past month was greater than 40% of your monthly bucket. As we all know the system is supposed to automaticaly turn that feature on so people need to be carefull especilay now that their rule is 40%+ in 2 consecutive months will result in the dreaded termination letter and may be getting charged for roaming.

 

LOL :O , No, I was not implicating anything or disagreeing with you, but just wanted to make sure that this is not it. I wish I can find a way to hack the Nlackberry to show that like I used to have on my Moto phones.

Now I have to get me a Blackjack for those questionable areas. I love this when I am traveling overseas as the netwrok slection is imediatly unlocked and I can see all but the second that I am home, this stops and goes away.

 

So are you going to bring your Nokia next time you are in that area to see if it was a Network vs phone thing?

 

Im suprised because as i am to understand it, there need not be roaming with cingular bc theres no fees or "local calling" just nationwide

 

The T&C says other wise. If one uses a raoming netwrok one now can be booted out of Cingular, the rule is 40% or more of the monhtly alotted any time minutes for 2 consecutive months and one is done. There is one more thing that also is not clear enough, since Cingular deducts, lets say points from the customer rating aka LTV, if they are to be on a Cingular tower outside their regional netwrok will they also consider this as roaming under the 40% rule despite it being a Cingular tower!

 

has anyone actually been booted bc of that? ive never heard of that law

 

yes we have seen many complain on the Cingular forums. they applied the 50% 3 month rule on many and some where part of family plans. The changed the rule to 40% 2 months a few months ago.

 

There were also people complaining here & at HoFo about being booted off for excessive roaming. It seems kids going to college in some area's were the biggest effected & think Michigan was the 1st area for this to happen in.

 

Some people are swearing that the new 3G SIM has worked so much better than the older one. I might try to replace it this week and see if it does do better.

 

I'm at college in extended on either Iwireless, or USCC/Alltel if I use my GAIT phone. I have the promo from Cingular from when I was selling them @ BBY. $25/mo for 2000 Nation GSM with 5mb web, free unl. text & picture. And they dont notice when I use up to about 500 minutes a month on USCC!

BTW, you can call cingular and ask them to add the feature code for "OffNet Alphatag". Any cingular phone will them show the network name of the service your phone is roaming on. It's a free feature, doesent't cost anything. It just gived back what your phone was meant to do in terms of displaying network, instead of manking the customers think that cingular's everywhere....

 

Well after reading this a few days ago and knowing that I would travel to an area that's roaming for both Cingular and Verizon last night, I took my girlfriend's Cingular phone with me that is still activated. It roamed on Union Telephone and did not show "Cingular EXTEND." It showed CINGULAR and when I dialed a wrong number it gave me an error message from Union Telephone Company.

 

Charlyee, Cingular did do away with true alpha tags, but I have heard of some people here and there being able to get it added to their account. Also, like others stated, Cingular does have the feature to show "Cingular Extend" which they use to warn people that roam to much, so I think the feature is there, it's just a matter of Cingular wanting to utilize it.

I guess I should have mentioned the phone/SIM combination. She has a Moto V551 I believe and the SIM is a 64k Smartchip.

 

Like I said earlier, it is a simple mod to enable the true network name to show on a Moto, although if the feature can be added by cs that is nice too.

-Jay

 

I am aware of that, Jay, but I think we were wondering if Cingular allowed the 'CINGULAR EXTEND' Alpha tag again on their network.

 

I hadn't seen Cingular Extend in a very long time. At the time I saw it I was on SunCom's network.

-Jay

 

about 5 years ago my friends dad had an old Motorola phone and he was roaming with it saying Cingular Extend.........it got run over and he got a new Moto and it hasnt said Cingular Extend in that area ever since

 

I have one of the new sims and I was roaming this morning... alpha tag still said cingular... do I need to call CS and have them add it? (the OffNet Alphatag feature)

I was roaming on CellOne or whatever company it is that serves southern west virginia (union, wv to be exact).

 

i dont think Cingular will activate the OffNet alpha tags on their phones.............you can call and ask but i dont think they will unlock them........cuz in the phones database i think all the MNCs are listed as being Cingular.............or i guess thats how they pull it off

 

Re: Cingular Extend??? - Interesting

You could try calling and asking for the 4EON feature (according to HoFo a lot of reps don't know about the feature and won't add it if you ask for "Off-Network roaming indication" or "True Alpha-Tag display", but they can look up the feature code).

You could try looking up and down your bill to see if 4EON appears on it, or you can call CS and ask

 

Hrmm.. I've worked there for awhile now and I've never heard of us suddenly sending out a different Alpha Tag to let a customer know they're roaming. I too wish that I could use my Samsung to find out what tower I'm registered on, but unfortunately... Regardless though, if you're on a nation plan you don't have much to worry about with roaming.