Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Alltel's Shrinking Pains

(Updated)
Some carriers suffer from growing pains, but the "new" Alltel has that in reverse. As their own network coverage area shrinks, some customers are getting pushed aside. The first response has been to a group of Alltel customers in southern Illinois who are using Alltel Wireless as their Internet service provider, mostly with a wireless air card plugged into a computer. Alltel claims these customers are using their Internet access too much while roaming. This does not affect users with broadband phones like Blackberry.

Alltel has offered to credit most of the expenses for the equipment involved and allow these customers to escape without an Early Termination Fee. Alltel is even throwing in a few weeks more of service, just to be nice. Surprisingly, some of these people just don't trust Alltel to credit the fees, so they sit and suffer and complain to whoever will listen.

We think Alltel is being more than fair, but we wonder if this is happening in other parts of the country where customers continue to use their Alltel modems wherever they want. Alltel claims these people had ample notification, and we believe them. To find the termination clause in Alltel's terms & conditions, you need to download the .pdf version.

These customers claim there is no other source for high-speed Internet access, but if they are being kicked out for excessive roaming, they should check to see who they have been roaming with and look for service there. Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, all other Alltel roaming is still okie-dokie.

4 comments:

Benjamin A said...

If they were excessively roaming than that means that there is another provider (More than likely Verizon based on PRLs) that would give them the signal they need. Something sounds wrong with that picture. Push come to shove move the data card to the better provider. If Alltel is covering the termination fee and reimbursing equipment than your out nothing. If they thought they had it bad compare that to what happened with Page Plus and how they have treated their customers lately who are accused of overusing the system and were booted with no warning.

Faith Baptist Church said...

I'll bet these people are complaining because they have no other source of *unlimited* mobile broadband. Verizon caps at 5GB, or 10GB through Millenicom (http://millenicom.com).

Faith Baptist Church said...

A bit off topic, but AT&T has posted up a nice looking map of the areas they're taking over from Verizon/Unicel/Alltel. They're actually quite extensive.

Scott W said...

Ian,
Thanks for pointing that out. We have posted the FCC map of the transcation and a link to the AT&T version (which is much larger), here.