It's Easier to Get Unlocked

AT&T has been recently forced to unlock their GSM phones at the customer's request 90 days after the phone purchase. Exceptions are the iPhone and for phones under an "exclusivity" agreement which would last no longer than 10 months. Prepaid phones can be unlocked after you provide a receipt for the phone's purchase. We're not trying to use our AT&T phones on other US networks, we're trying to use them internationally by inserting a local SIM. Some phones are easy to unlock, but yours seems to always be the one that isn't.

We compared AT&T's "new" unlocking policy with other GSM carriers. T-Mobile will unlock your phone for you after 40 days with postpaid accounts and 6 months for prepaid. The next largest GSM carrier, Cincinnati Bell Wireless, won't unlock phones under any circumstances. Our favorite GSM carrier, Viaero Wireless, doesn't have a lock on their phones, except for certain Blackberries.

The only reason the courts forced AT&T to provide the unlock codes is that they were accused of being 'misleading' in providing locking information to their customers. We found that AT&T would provide the unlock code after a 2-year contract was completed, or if you could convince them you would be roaming outside the country and would need to insert a local SIM.

It's unfortunate that it takes a court order to make the wireless companies be more consumer-friendly. AT&T needs to learn that some of their customers are lawyers and they should be treated nice or they'll do what lawyers do. For once, that's a good thing.

The New Alltel: Serving 22 States!

We have yet to see the other shoe drop. The "New Alltel", the part purchased by ATN, has the potential of soon offering local service in 22 states. They can do this by selling service in their Commnet markets. I put together a Map of Alltel and Commnet Combined Properties.

They have so little coverage in some of those states it wouldn't make economic sense. However, in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah there are lots of Commnet cell sites, and they will most likely add those to their new Alltel holdings in 6 other states. Throw in the Florida Keys and the odd city in Wyoming and you've got a basketful of potential local service areas. Commnet has enough coverage to have offered local service in the Four Corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, even before acquiring Alltel. Additionally, they are building a 4G broadband wireless network in northeast Arizona.

The holdup is that they are using the Alltel name, and the "Old" Alltel is still operating in most of those Commnet markets. They will eventually be sold to AT&T to satisfy Fed competitive concerns, and then the "New" Alltel can take over. It may be tricky to appeal to customers by saying, "If you liked their Alltel, you'll like our Alltel." But that's why the Marketing people make the big bucks. "Chad is still here, he just moved across the street."

Sprint - The New Prepaid King?

With the purchase of Virgin Mobile, Sprint became a bit top heavy on prepaid services. They have now added yet a 4th prepaid service that will be available mostly at Wal-Mart stores named Common Cents Mobile. The "hook", or the gimmick, is that they will Round Down your minute usage. Use 1 minute and 45 seconds and it will round down to 1 minute.

With this newest prepaid product, Sprint has clarified the personality of each of their prepaids. Virgin will be a data-oriented brand for younger users and Boost will focus on voice services, which is a good use of the slower Nextel iDEN network. Oh, the 3rd brand? I'm sure you've heard of Assurance Wireless aiming at low-income customers. So low, they qualify for government supported Lifeline service. Don't expect Assurance to be much of a force until they expand beyond the half-dozen states they currently serve. That leaves Common Cents as a phone for...uh...Wal-Mart shoppers?

If you're considering a switch to prepaid, welcome to one of the fastest-growing groups of wireless users. The easiest switch is to use your current phone with your current provider. Oddly, Sprint is one of the few carriers that won't let you switch to their own prepaid. For users who travel outside the city, there may be better choices. Like Virgin, Common Cents Mobile doesn't support off the Sprint network roaming.

View the top Prepaid options at CellularByTheMinute.com. We said this a few years ago, and it's even more true today. Fear no Prepaid, it's not just for kids any more.

Is Alltel the Future of Prepaid...and More?

We have been combing the notices from the FCC, ATN, Alltel and others trying to find a few morsels of what's coming from the "new" Alltel, also known as, 'That part of Alltel sold to ATN.' One of the findings is that Alltel's "U" prepaid brand is no where to be found, but now there is an interesting selection of 6 Alltel prepaid plans being offered:

• Unlimited Talk
• Unlimited Talk & Text
• Pay Per Minute
• Pay Per Day
• Pay Per Month 200
• Pay per Month 400

This collection of plans seems to include the features of every prepaid offered by other carriers. With the Pay Per Month plans they can even complete with the best of the no-contract carriers. This is the kind of thinking that has made Alltel stand out among carriers, and why we have long recommended them in markets where they are available. Will this happen with Prepaid?

Could this affect the rest of us? The same management team that created features like "My Circle", and other ideas copied by other carriers, are in place with the Alltel-from-ATN network. So, even though the number of people served by the "new" Alltel is drastically less than the old, this downsized carrier may still be influential in coming up with more creative ideas.

Some customers trying to sign up with Alltel are being forwarded to Verizon Wireless who cannot set up any Alltel services. These callers are being identified by their phone number as living in Verizon markets, and the trick around that is to hide your Caller ID by pressing "*67" before you call Alltel's customer service (800-ALLTEL-1).

Then there's that group of Alltel users who will be absorbed into AT&T. Some are thrilled at the prospect, others, not so much. It gives us this additional level of confusion that keeps us all in the guessing game. Help me, Chad!

Alltel Lives On

As expected, Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN) today completed the acquisition of the Alltel properties that were being sold by Verizon Wireless. ATN announced the closing of the purchase and paying $223 Million as the final price. But the big news is they will keep the Alltel name for many years. They also will be able to use the Alltel name in some other markets.

We suspected the final retail name would not be "Allied Wireless" because ATN never reserved the domain name, alliedwireless.com. As a matter of fact, we were offered to buy the Allied Wireless web address. We're going to guess that several of the Commnet Wireless markets will become new "Alltel" markets and will be able to offer local retail services under the Alltel name, making wireless products immediately available in a whole lot more places than the markets in the 6 states involved in today's Verizon Wireless transaction.

We are fairly certain that the Commnet sites will be involved in the new Alltel network, and since Commnet already has good roaming relationships with most other carriers, the new Alltel gets a nice jump out of the gate. Go Chad, go!

Finding Our Pages

From time to time we actually meet face to face with fans of our sites and they often ask what happened to some of our old web pages. During 2008 and 2009 we converted some web pages to whole sites of their own, and added some new developers to watch over the info on those pages. Some of those pages turned out to be big successes, and few others didn't pan out so well.

So, for the last week we have been consolidating not just links to each web site, but links to each individual page. We incorporated that into a new, expanded Site Map, that includes almost all the pages on all our related sites. The only pages that aren't individually linked are the separate state wireless network Reviews (there's 50 of them), and the Archives for this Blog's predecessor (6 years' worth). We thought that would add way too many links to be useful.

We're always trying to come up with new and unique cellular topics, but from time to time we lose those new pages among all the others. We also hate to delete any old pages just because few people read them. After all, they're old friends of ours. You might want to look for some of those old friends, and new ones, at the new Mountain Wireless Site Map.

FCC Approves ATN Takeover of Alltel

I thought I would give everyone a heads up on the FCC's approval, today. ATN will take over the markets that will be spun off from Verizon's purchase of the rest of Alltel. ATN is Atlantic Tele-Network and has named Allied Wireless as the company that Alltel Wireless will evolve into. ATN also owns Commnet Wireless and CC Communications Wireless with a total of nearly 600 cell sites across the US.

You read it here, first!

Taking Your Phone Out of the Country

Over the past few weeks we expanded our very popular Mexico Roaming Page to an International Roaming Page. We haven't quite approached George Clooney's frequent flier miles, but we have traveled out of the US enough to know that wireless is almost as universally available in other countries as it is here. Even at the airport in Pokhara, Nepal, west of Kathmandu, is a huge billboard with the picture of a GSM SIM, inviting visitors to buy Nepal cellular service.

On our new Global Roaming page, we try to explain how using your phone overseas is just a little different. We have compiled the experiences of worldwide travelers into a list of global roaming options as well as Tips & Considerations. The majority of us want to know if we can just pack our own cell phone in our carry-on and head abroad. This includes those who want to take a cruise, but can't bear with the idea of leaving the cell phone behind.

For travel around most of the globe, AT&T and T-Mobile phones have, by far, the widest roaming capabilities. Some CDMA carriers will loan you a CDMA/GSM phone as GSM dominates outside the US. Even then, international roaming is not cheap. We found less expensive alternatives but how many hoops are you willing to jump through to find the best rate?

I have traveled from the airport to the hotel many times, with no way to find a local prepaid phone or SIM, until I was able to venture from the hotel, which may be far from any stores. That's where the roaming abilities of your current phone help you at least get through the first few days. We may be talking about dollars per minute roaming fees instead of the pennies we expect at home. There's a whole bunch of considerations: like on a cruise ship, you can either pay the $3 per minute roaming rate (or more), or find a way to connect through wi-fi, which is also not free. Or the fact that a prepaid phone or SIM purchased in India roams more cheaply in surrounding countries than most US phones. The experience can be fun as you deal with foreign businesses at a "locals" level, even in Mexico.

If you're taking a foreign vacation or business trip, we hope to hear from you. Just don't pay too much for the call.