Cingular hangs up on some Michigan Customers

Centennial Wireless has 850MHz GSM service in Mt. Pleasant. The roaming agreement with Dobson is actually quite recent.

 

It seems you have misunderstood my post. I was not talking about how easy or difficult it is to read the contracts. In that aspect, all contracts are just as easy or as difficult to read/understand. It all depends on how rich the reader's vocabulary is.

What I was talking about is that Verizon's contracts always have so many conditional rules, where features apply or not apply depending on some complex routine of if's, maybe's and but's. Cingular's contracts are much more straight forward:

- Cingular M2M always applies no matter where you are in the US, or which US network you are roaming on or whether or not you block caller ID or whether or not the caller ID is transmitted. Verizon has a complex algorithm to determine whether or not your call is IN.

- Verizon international roaming charges on CDMA are "$0.69/minute plus pass through of serving carrier's tolls, taxes and surcharges." So go figure whatever that means. You won't know exactly how much you'll be charged per minute until you get your bill. With Cingular, whatever rate you get per minute, that's what you will be charged.

- Cingular's now defunct North America plan was simple. No roaming or long distance charges anywhere in Canada, US and Mexico where you get a signal. With Verizon: "In Canada and Mexico, you may be able to place or receive calls in areas outside the North America’s Choice Home Airtime Rate and Coverage Area. In those instances, usage may be charges at 69¢/minute." Come on, is this a truly North American plan or not?

These are just some examples. I'm sure there are more.

Back when I signed up, it was even more horrifying. Verizon had these ridiculous A and B settings that you had to changed if you went to Stamford, CT otherwise you'd get nailed with roaming charges. With TDMA carriers, that was never an issue since A and B band switching was 100% automatic. Also, Verizon always nickle and dimed you to death. They charged separately for voicemail, caller ID, even call forwarding! Plus, they charged $0.69/min long distance to call South Jersey. Now, this was back in 1999. The thing is that with Cellular One (now Cingular) ALL of the mentioned features were INCLUDED in the rate plan at no additional charge. Bottomline is, 7 years later, the same philosophy of "nickel-n-dime" for everything still remains at Verizon, although they have softened it quite a bit forced by competitors.

 

Hey thanks! I googled, gsmworlded and didn't connect with Centennial. I found Salmon which partnered with Cingular, Now and Lite Wave but their web pages didn't seem to offer independent services to consumers.

Do you know how recent the Dobson roaming agreements are? It seems that Cingular still uses Centennial as a roaming partner.

I wonder how these roaming agreement movements may have effected those michigan students. I'll assume that weren't the first CMU students to have Cingular. So the question is how were years of students treated in the past?

P.S. I lived in Michigan for 12 years, but that was back when the glaciers were still forming the Great Lakes

 

Like I said before, thanks to competitors, including Cingular, Verizon has soften their "nickel-n-dime" school of policies. But I was referring to just that: nickel-n-dime policies. As for Cingular charging too much for MediaNet, the $18 upgrade fee, getting rid of prorated ETF, etc. I agree 100%, however that falls outside the scope of this discussion.

 

Yes competition from Cingular did alot to rid Verizon of some confusing policies, like the fine print for the $0.69 roaming fee when 'off network' on the "America's largest calling area" in the full page ads

My point is that is what long time users of Verizon look for when switching to unfamiliar carriers like Cingular. I know this, because I was drilled repeatedly by new cingular users from Verizon. So by using only the Cingular tag, they eliminate confusion for new users and well as current users. Personally, I would like to know what roaming partner I'm on...it's my natural curiosity. But I can't seem to hack my 6230 to display that.

 

TNDan21,

Please help me figure out 'IN' because I can't quite 'get it' from the web pages:

1. 'IN' only apples to others that have 'IN' ? OK, Cingular persons need to have plans with M2M too. The lower end plans do not.

2. If one half of the 'IN' persons is roaming, digital or analog, are they IN or not?

3. Checking voicemail is charged or considered 'IN'? Also if your roaming?

I going to assume that one reason the CMU family chose Cingular was because they would have free M2M calls between the parents and students, even while roaming. If Verizon does the same thing as Cingular, then they should sign up with a Verizon family plan, as long as Verizon does not mind them roaming off network at CMU.

 

Thanks Dan for clearing that up for me. Then it is exactly the same now as Cingular, with the exception of VM charges. I didn't quite understand why the VZW web page let you check your friends phone # to see if they are IN. With Cingular the person with M2M gets it, but not the other party, if they don't have M2M, same as VZW.

 

That's not really to tell you if they are IN. That just tells you that they are Verizon customers so that if you have M2M, then you know you can call them for free. It's just a marketing thing.

You can do the same thing with the Wireless Amber Alerts website, except that it works for almost all carriers. So you can enter a phone number and it will tell you which carrier they are with.

 

Precisely. As long as you are a Verizon customer with "IN" then every other Verizon customer is "IN" to you, even if they do not have "IN" themselves. What's so hard to understand about that?

 

Louisiana and Mississippi, and only when on Centennial Wireless SID 1299...which should be a rare occurrence these days given that VZW also roams on Cellular South, SPCS, Alltel, and even Cingular AMPS in most of the areas covered by 1299.

Based on an interpretation of the current VZW PRL, there are also "IN exceptions" in parts of Ohio (Dobson) and Texas (Dobson again, and Keystone Wireless, whoever the heck they are.)

-SC

 

You have a point with your statement above, but I doubt that is really why. The real reason is because cingular is not making money off these people. If someone roams a lot, the carrier loses money, period.
Verizon's new AC plans that have been out for over a year don't penelize you for roaming and IN still applies, as do your Night and Weekends, etc. I have a friend who has a house outside of Moab where ALLTEL coverage is much better than Verizon and he forces his phone to ALLTEL while down there(ALLTEL for that area isn't even in the PRL) and 100% of his usage while down there is on ALLTEL, he's never gotten in trouble for it, IN, Nights and Weekends, etc. all still apply the same.

 

Salmon is just a license company that Cingular partnered with to gain access to the "small entity" C/F PCS licenses.

I just checked FCC ULS and not only does Salmon have licenses, Cingular also has licenses of its own (Detroit MTA) that cover Mount Pleasant. In other words, Cingular is dropping customers because they won't (not "can't") build out native coverage in a college town where there's lots of roaming going on. :loony:

-SC

 

Well this shows that they have just started enforcing their clause...and why? They are losing money, paying more for roaming as they are making and changing that would enable their financial numbers to look a lot better.

 

Well then if you think that only Verizon nickel-n-dimes people and Cingular doesn't I think I must be missing something.

 

America's Largest Home Calling Area ads started to appear with the New, NO ROAM America's Choice Plans...not before.

 

hmmm....I never said that.

 

How about we stop with the name calling and labelling?

 

I agree they should have the Alpha Tag show either Extended network or something similar to let people know they are roaming on another carrier, but I think the reason they don't do this is because it's very rare that someone will spend over 3 months on another carriers network, except in the case like this where people are in a college & the carrier doesn't have coverage.

I still think this is a ploy by Cingular to get permission to build out towers in the area, maybe they have tried and the local govt. keeps turning them down and now they can get people complaining behind them to force the towns to let them build towers, especially if they can't add antenna's to the current towers. (this is just my thought & don't know if this is true)

 

We WA users can only guess at what the carrier's legal details are in roaming agreements or that agreements are really the same for all roaming partners within the carrier (Cingular). We have to admit that we don't really know. We can only discuss legal possibilities here.

All carriers lose money from free roaming national plans; no company enjoys losing money, even Verizon. But so do the smaller roaming partners (that offer national plans) when their clients roam on Cingular or Verizon. We don't even know the internal fee structure...it is certainly not $0.69 a minute...that was only to discourage consumers.

I don't even doubt that Dobson and Cingular just exchange bucket of roaming minutes between each other. Dobson could be the bigger loser since they have the smaller network. I would think most carriers would prefer the steady revenue stream of monthly fees, than sporadic roaming fee.

M2M or IN loses money too, when compared to charging anytime minutes, like they used to. It probably loses more money than roaming fees that are absorbed.

When Verizon was Number 1, not Number 2, they flaunted (and users here)having the most coverage, but the fine print had some 'gotcha' regarding roaming fees. We are all glad that they changed to match Cingular plans.

.

Fire14 You may have a good point here. Perhaps it relates to Roamer1's comments. BTW there are more than one Mt. Pleasant in MI


Just like Dell and Apple giving PC discounts to college students so they buy into brand names, the carriers have a high motive to give service to campuses. That is why I suspect more to this story, and wonder why previous college kids didn't have a problem before this. It doesn't make sense that Cingular simply got greedy all of a sudden.

 

:lmao: Yeah, and there is a Midland, TX and Mt. Pleasant, TX... I was very confused for a while. I read the article thinking, 'When did we go from MI to TX?'


Really all it boils down to is this: contracts are harsh. They are designed to protect the carrier, not the consumer.

The contract has the 50% clause for a reason and, obviously, if Cingular put it into effect, they had to be losing a lot of money on roaming in that area. It's not very customer-friendly and isn't good customer relations, Cingular would have known that, so they must have been left little or no choice.

 

I agree and it could be just losing money. However I'm open to the possibility that Dobson (CelluarOne) or Centennial complained that too many students have moved for 4 years to Mt. Pleasant to be consider 'roaming', but should be required to get local service in the home turf. That's money lost for the roaming partners. The company to company contract may have forced Cingular's hand. Or as Fire14 said, it maybe a ploy to get around local rules about antennas if indeed Cingular has licenses there (from Roamer1).

I don't know. But I'm not worried about putting a 50% monitor on my phone, because I think this is a special case. I don't even use 50% of my family minutes now...the kids do that, even if I was roaming off network for more than 3 consecutive months.

 

CellularONE (WWC, not Dobson) did a similar thing 2-3 years ago with the 50% rule. It only affected 60-80 subscribers, who were sent letters and given a month to cancel without an early termination fee. They were people who had used more than 50% roaming for at least a year, I think. Not too many people were affected by that campaign.

 

As I figured. Actually, there is no mention in the OP that the CMU students were required to pay the ETF...it has just been assumed!

 

Your idea about Dobson actually wanting the customers instead of having them roam on their network with a Cingular plan is not a bad idea. We all agree that most college students use their cellphone a lot. An average per-minute roaming rate that we came up with was something like 10 cents per minute. Let's say that a Cingular customer goes to College in this town, using only 1000 minutes per month on Dobson's network around the college town. Well, that's 1000 *$.10, and if my math serves me right, that would be $100 in roaming Dobson would make every month from only that Cingular customer. Even a college student that needs a lot of minutes would not spend $100 on Dobson service plans and add ons every month, so if you look at it this way, Dobson would be making more money with Cingular customers roaming off their network, instead of having those people be their own customers.
Sorry if this is cheerleading too.

 

Ah you must be too young to have children in college...they pay for nothing...the parents do!

It certainly is a plausible calculation, I don't know. Let's look at it further. If they (the family) are at or over the 50% rule, they are paying for 2000 minutes per month. Currently Cingular charges $110. for 2100minutes and two lines. Add 3 more lines (the OP was a 5 line family) @ $10 each,plus at least two users with txt message bundles and we are easily up to $150 per month for that family plan. So they are already paying over the $100 that the roaming fees may cost cingular.

And if the 50% rule is real, then if they drop down to 900 minutes roaming (45%), then for $90, instead of your $100, Cingular is OK with that? Of course there must be thresholds somewhere, but they would lose a customer over $10? Esp. a college kid who may get brand addicted?

Another calculation. $110/2100 is 5.2 cents per minute is Cingular's revenue. Divide by 2 for normal overhead,profit, etc and we are down to 2.6cents per minute for internal per minute cost. If company to company they traded at that rate, 1000 minutes roaming is only $26 bucks. I think whatever roaming rates existed before the current National plans is out of date. The new National plans are to all the carriers advertising advantage, so I think they work to keep the costs low.

People on Dobson probably roam more on Cingular than the other way around. Which would happen if a lot of kids from rural Michigan went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which they do and where Dobson has no native service. I bet they trade bucket of roamng minutes, as one option.

But who knows. We are probably beating this to death. Best to wait and see if this situation grows in volume or is just a fluke.

viewfly

 

With the new on-line Cingular coverage map, one can see the situation in Mt. Pleasant, Mi (west of Midland, MI) very clearly now.

College bound parents should make good use of this new detailed Cingular coverage interactive viewer: very much like tmobile's. It shows that roaming partners (gray areas) are used in that college town, but not nearby Midland (orange, of course).

http://63.241.153.180/coverageviewer/B2B.html

 

Thanks for providing this link... I've been awaiting this for a while. Gold Star for Viewfly!!!:browani: