Wireless in Burlington,VT

You left a few off of there like USCC which will soon be Verizon. But, what do you mean by decode? Frequencies? Or what?

 

well, here we go, Devon is its own mobile carrier that went somewhat bankrupt, articles of this are available online, Cellular One is alot of different companies with lots of different phones, they are now pretty much a supplier for T-Mobile, Cingular, Etc. With Moto, Ericsson, etc. phones. VTel is part of ALLTEL that makes a mess of products. Alaska Native Wireless is a tricky one, they do own spectrum in your area and compete with other carriers up there and probably parts of Canada. The rest of the companies are givens.

 

T-Mobile: Already has a small presence in Vermont. They have coverage in and around Killington even though nothing is shown on the maps.

Unicel/CellularOne: Formerly Cellular One, now known (as of a couple of months ago) as Unicel. Owned by Rural Cellular Corporation (RCC). They are unifying their east coast brands (the Maine portion of their network has been Unicel) under one name.

Devon Mobile Communications: Bankrupt carrier as stated before. Assests and licenses were auctioned off. Verizon acquired some of their licenses, and US Cellular acquired some of their licenses in Vermont.

In regards to US Cellular, they now own licenses in all of Vermont. They recently acquired Burlington and Rutland Vermont through the purchase of Devon licenses and through a spectrum swap with AT&T. The new freqs are 1900mhz.

 

Oh, and Alaska Native Wireless is a regional (Alaska) cooperative of wireless corporations which is based in Alaska. They won the auction to purchase the NextWave national spectrum. This gave them a lot of the country including Vermont as well as major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, Tampa, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, New Haven and Portland. They are not currently offering service in any of these areas and the auction purchase is still being disputed by the government, NextWave, and Alaska Native Wireless.

And just to clarify what companies actually provide service in Vermont...here ya go:

Verizon Wireless (B Carrier in N. Vermont/PCS Carrier in Southern Vermont)
Sprint PCS (PCS Statewide)
Unicel (A Carrier in entire state)
Nextel (800mhz Iden)
US Cellular (B Carrier in Southern Vermont, has PCS licenses as well)
T-Mobile (has service in Killington but does not sell service)

 

Yes, Adelphia had grand plans for a cell phone company. Blanketing the state with both macro and microcells for 100% seamless coverage. Their goal was to be an alternative not only for the other cell companies but for landline carriers as well. They were going to provide their product at a very reasonable cost focussing on their local coverage and not on roaming ability. It sounded great until they realized this goal would be too expensive and of course the whole Adelphia scandal and bankruptcy. In other words their original plan was not well thought out.

 

Great thread (I'm in Essex).

In addition, it is expected that Cingular/ATT will be providing GSM1900 thru the RoadRunner buildout.

Also, Unicel has just announced they will be overlaying GSM850 on their existing TDMA network.

Add to that T-Mobile's announcement this week of a contract with Ericcson to buildout their "underserved New England regions", and US Cellular's CDMA800 conversion and CDMA1900 buildout in Northern Vermont...

Put it all together, and I'm enthusiastic we will have many more choices for mobile providors here in Burlington over the coming year or so!

 

I thought there was a law banning new towers (digital GSM) in Vermont. Has the legislation changed? I didn't get T-mobile for the fact that I travel to Stowe often. Verizon's been excellent in VT.

 

No, no laws banning towers(new or otherwise) in Vermont. Towns are able to regulate where the towers go but they can't(and don't) outright ban them. It is true however that some towns in Vermont give cell companies a hard time when wanting to build a new tower.

 

It is not legal for a city/town to ban cell towers. Some have tried but lost when the matter went to federal court.

 

The cellular license that USCC owns covers southern VT, northern NH and part of northwest MA.

 

USCC also has PCS licenses in Northern Vermont. They aren't using them at present time though.