Expanded Unicel Coverage in AL/MS

That makes sense...

Of course, the question remains as to whether RCC/Unicel will go CDMA or GSM in AL/MS. Given the recent addition of RCC's Alabama coverage to VZW's AC plan and the fact Cingular has fairly extensive overlap with RCC, I think RCC may be leaning toward CDMA...

-SC (who's been moving and so offline most of this week )

 

Yeah I saw where they are adding Starkville / Columbus as local. I used to travel there often and was on "Extended Area" using AT&T. AT&T has a pretty good network there.

I'm not sure if they will make the coverage from Greenwood (Leflore Co) all the way east to Columbus local on US 82. It would be nice. Their local coverage cuts off right where Carroll & Montgomery counties meet on US 82.

 

It looks like CDMA is becoming a greater possibility. Check this out from the Unicel web site's info page for new AT&T customers...

Q. Will GSM service be available with Unicel?

A . Unicel is acquiring the AT&T Wireless TDMA network, and AT&T Wireless will no longer operate a GSM network in your area. Therefore, the GSM service that you currently have will not be available after June 25 th. Watch your mail for the Unicel Welcome Packet, visit a retail store, or call the Customer Care Center for details on how you can avoid any interruption in your service after the transition by getting a new Unicel phone.

http://www.unicel.com/zone50/support/att.html

 

1st, does UNICEL really expect ppl to just downgrade from GSM to TDMA without complaining?

2nd, will they at least keep the GSM towers up for roaming revenue(like Alaska Digitel does in AK)?

3rd(or more like 2B), is it possible that UNICEL will do a GSM roaming network build in the Counties in AL where the other Cellular Carrier(A-Side) is also CDMA? Like if UNICEL and Alltel or UNICEL or Cellular South are both cellular carriers in a rural area of AL and MS, will UNICEL at least do a GSM roamer network like Western Wireless dba Cellular One does in the Western US?

 

RCC/Unicel has never struck me as technically competent enough to implement either CDMA or GSM. Hell, I'm surprised they managed TDMA.

This is the company whose entire cell network (including service for RCC customers who were roaming on other networks!) went down for several days because they had no backup whatsoever when their facility in Alabama got hit by lightning two years ago.

Their problem is that in some areas, the other side is GSM (Cingular), and in some, it's CDMA (CellSouth). I guess they can go with 5 MHz or so of GSM and the rest CDMA and Analog, but if there was much money in GSM roaming I'd think CellSouth would have done this already...

(No, I'm not a bitter ex-customer, no-sir-ee.)

 

1) Apparently so. More than likely, AT&T had very few GSM customers in the areas RCC/Unicel acquired, if only because of limited GSM coverage in that region.

2) RCC doesn't have any GSM infrastructure in the South and didn't acquire any, so no. (They could always backhaul markets cross-country a la Commnet Wireless, of course...)

3) Possibly, but I just can't see a good reason for them to do so, since even in most of the counties where the other 850 carrier is ALLTEL, Cellular South, or Pine Belt and thus CDMA, Cingular and/or AT&T has 1900 licenses (and Cingular has been rather aggressive in building out 1900 in fairly rural areas of AL and MS) and any benefit RCC/Unicel would see from a GSM roamer-only network, even a "concentrated" one, would probably be very small.

I think RCC not acquiring any GSM infrastructure from AT&T (and not leasing time from them to support GSM customers) and VZW adding RCC's Alabama coverage to their America's Choice plan coverage are rather telling as to what RCC plans to do in AL/MS.

-SC

 

Google found this thread for me, it's a bit dated, but...

Unicel has screwed me. Or AT&T, I'm not sure where the blame lies. My name's Kary, here's my story:

I'm in Starkville, MS. Around the end of May and beginning of June I decided to get a personal cell phone since they were going to faze out the CellSouth phones at work. I live 5-6 miles south of Starkville, and my work CellSouth phone (TDMA) gets very poor reception at home. Not really liking their plans or phones anyway, I decide I don't want to sign up with CellSouth. At this time my wife had an AT&T old Nokia (TDMA) that got good reception at the house.

I signed up for Alltel and Sprint to try them out. My biggest concerns were

1. usable reception at the house
2. a decent plan and a cool phone

Sprint had cool phones. I got a Samsung A680 and loved it. Alas, it didn't have reliable reception at the house. Alltel worked pretty well but neither me or my wife were excited about their phones. We tried the Motorola T720 (CDMA).

Then I hear Cingular is going GSM in our area on June 2. Radio Shack had the phones and they were pretty cool, the plan was pretty good so I signed up. Meanwhile we cancelled Alltel and Sprint. I tried the Samsung x427 (437?) and it was ok but I really wanted an outside LCD so I went back and got the Motorola V400. So life was good. I had reliable reception at the house and after the 2 week trial period with no major dissappointments, I went back and ported my wife's AT&T number over and got her a LG 4050.

Maybe a week later, June 26, the day after Unicel took over AT&T's towers in our area, we woke up and after a bit realized that neither of us had a bit of service. Not a single bar. Both phones work everywhere else in town. It seemed the tower that was closest to us had vanished.

I waited until Monday and called Cingular and tried all the silly stuff they told me to do with my phone with no luck. I finally found on Unicel's webpage the info about them or AT&T not providing GSM service to our area anymore. And since my wife's old AT&T phone had worked great at the house, I assume the tower out by us had been an AT&T, now Unicel sans GSM, tower.

So after my fabulous 2 week trial period, my phones are useless at home. This is unacceptable. This was my main determining factor in a cell provider because I want to cancel the landline.

I eventually got Cingular tech support to put in a ticket with their engineers on Wednesday 6/30, but I'm 99% sure what they're going to tell me. "Sorry that's Unicel's tower, there's nothing we can do."

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. If I decide to cancel I'm going to moan and complain enough that hopefully I'll not have to pay the early disconnect fee.

Anyway, I just needed to vent. Thanks.

 

Has Cingular even turned up GSM in the Starkville/Columbus MSA? I thought they were using AT&T there. I figured Cingular would have turned up their coverage before the switch to Unicel and certainly didn't expect them to be selling GSM handsets, yet. Any other Cingular GSM folks out there with or without service in the Golden Triangle?