Does Alltel have an agreement with any provider in Berne, IN?

These are the SIDs available in Indiana with an Alltel National Freedom plan.

INDIANAPOLIS
EVANSVILLE
SOUTH BEND
WARSAW
LOGANSPORT
JASPER
SEYMOURS
GREENSBURG
INDIANAPOLIS
FORT WAYNE
SELVIN
HAZLETON
TERRE HAUTE
NEWTON
HUNTINGTON
CRAWFORDSVILLE
MICHIGAN CITY
RANDOLPH
EVANSVILLE
BLOOMINGTON
MARION
FORT WAYNE
SOUTHBEND

Alltel only has towers in Burns Harbor, Nevada Mills, Indian Prairie and LaPorte, IN.

 

Have you tried forcing your phone over to analog? Might be able to get a much better signal that way. Alltel primarily uses VZW in Indiana.

 

The only thing total freedom will do is not bill you if you use a tower thats not part of national freedom... it won't open up any additional towers to your phone to use. Your rate plan will not help you.

 

Your phone should use Centennial already on your National Freedom plan but I think you will get charged for it. Switching to Total Freedom will just not charge you for using their network, but not actually allowing your phone to use/see that SID...it should already lock on to Centennial if it's the only network available, but on your current plan you will pay roaming.

 

1. Yes, Verizon.
2. Not required, the proper SID has been included in the PRL.
3. N/A
Centennial Wireless sells GSM phones in NE Indiana. Were it permitted by roaming agreement (or 911 call), the AMPS analog signal of the parking lot site would be available to you. The SID is 549, and the MNC is 310-030.

COtech

 

Centenial's SID 549 is not in the Alltel PRL. If your phone's home SID is an even number (B band), it will only look on B band when no signal is present from a SID in the PRL. You could change the home SID on your phone to the Centenial SID and put the phone in "home only" mode to force your phone to use Centenial. When you leave Berne, put the phone back in standard scan.

Kyocera programming instructions:
1. Press [1],[1],[1],[1],[1],[1],[MENU]
2. Enter Security Code (Default 000000)
3. WRITE DOWN EVERTHING BEFORE MAKING ANY CHANGES
4. Change the AMPS home SID to 549 and save. There is no need to change the CDMA home SID since Centenial does not have CDMA according to COtech.

If Alltel does not have a roaming agreement with Centenial, you still won't be able to complete a call, except 911 and maybe credit card. It's probably worth a try though, since you have Total Freedom.

royc

 

No, no calls in or out without a roaming agreement.

Your co-workers have GSM digital phones, which work on Centennial. You have a CDMA digital phone, which doesn't GPRS/EDGE are for data, corresponding to 1xRTT and EVDO for CDMA phones.

COtech

 

Centennial has migrated to GSM in Indiana, it's called Centennial Blue, your alltel CDMA phone cannot roam on that signal, centennial does use CDMA in other area's of the country. Hope this helps, generally Verizon has decent coverage up here same as Sprint.

 

If the phone is analog-capable, you still might be able to connect to Centennial in analog. If you can find in your menus, the roaming setting that shows Automatic A or Automatic B, try setting it to the opposite of the current setting.

 

Last I knew Cennetenial was running cdma and gsm in Michigan...

It seems as though with a total freedom plan and giving that tower has amps or cdma on it you should have signal. It sounds like they only have gsm on that tower.

 

Centennial Wireless runs AMPS, TDMA and GSM in the the U.S. They do have a CDMA network in Puerto Rico.

 

not to sound condeseding but A and B does not really matter on phones anymore. I know some phones still have the setting where it says you can switch but PRLs caused that to not be looked at anymore. Alltel used to have an agreement with Cent but that has gone away. So you can try to force it using the home only trick but you can only call 911.Also, on most of the newer phones the home only trick no longer works if they SID is flagged negative in the PRL.. kinda sucks.

 

The "home only" trick works fine if the SID isn't neg'd in the PRL. It's very useful to get around the problem of my phone preferring a -104 dBm Alltel signal and ignoring a -85 dBm Verizon signal, where Verizon roaming is allowed.

Automatic A and B settings (where available on handsets) will work if the phone cannot find a signal from any SID listed in the PRL. Otherwise, the PRL is in control and the setting is ignored. In that situation, my Moto, which does not have the Automatic A and B setting, will only look on B band, since I have a B band home SID.

royc

 

And the results were????????