Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Plateau Wireless: The Next to Fall

Plateau Wireless of eastern New Mexico has agreed to sell their network, licenses and customers to AT&T.  Plateau has very good coverage and for current customers, service will probably get better.  While wireless under AT&T will be a bit more convenient, local users will lose any 'bundle' discounts with the local telephone companies' other services.

AT&T previously had very poor coverage in New Mexico and this, along with their Alltel acquisition, improves coverage significantly.  This is fairly unpopulated territory but it includes some I-40 and I-25 coverage.  Plateau's associated telephone cooperatives will continue to offer their other communications services and will probably do it better with a little AT&T money in their pockets.


Thursday, June 5, 2014

More in The Wireless Graveyard

Recently lost: Long Lines Wireless in Iowa, Airfire Mobile in Wisconsin and Allwest Wireless in Utah.  Only the Long Lines network will remain intact and their customers will be switched over to AT&T.  These carriers are small enough to disappear with little notice.   They lived near the middle of our Mountain Wireless Ratings and their loss will probably only be symbolic.

Sadly, the loss of T-Mobile moved one step closer to reality today unless common sense prevails in Washington.  Common sense? That's not likely, but it has happened before when they denied the AT&T/T-Mobile combination.  All Sprint needs is more spectrum and it seems to be coming available in bits and pieces, it's just in markets too small to help out.  We can just hope.