AT&T Roaming

Drove from Denver to Salt Lake this week and ran into quite a bit of
roaming on AT&T with my T-Mobile service that I didn't notice a year ago.
Probably part if the failed merger.

Ironically, I only noticed much of it because I was using an unlocked
AT&T phone. Quite a bit along routes 6 and 191 was 3G-only; there was no
AT&T 2G service. My son, using a T-Mobile-branded phone, had no service
in those areas since his phone only has 3G at T-Mo's 1700MHz 3G frequency
(as well as 2100 for Europe.)

If it was there last year I wouldn't have known because I was using a T-
Mo-branded phone at that time with no AT&T-compatible 3G.

On 8/11/2012 11:30 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
> Drove from Denver to Salt Lake this week and ran into quite a bit of
> roaming on AT&T with my T-Mobile service that I didn't notice a year ago.
> Probably part if the failed merger.
>
> Ironically, I only noticed much of it because I was using an unlocked
> AT&T phone. Quite a bit along routes 6 and 191 was 3G-only; there was no
> AT&T 2G service. My son, using a T-Mobile-branded phone, had no service
> in those areas since his phone only has 3G at T-Mo's 1700MHz 3G frequency
> (as well as 2100 for Europe.)
>
> If it was there last year I wouldn't have known because I was using a T-
> Mo-branded phone at that time with no AT&T-compatible 3G.

Last month I took my AT&T branded phone with a T-Mobile prepaid SIM up
on California 108 in an area (ZIP 95335) where T-Mobile shows no service
on either prepaid or postpaid (which seem to be the same in the U.S.).
There map is correct. There was AT&T service, as well as CDMA roaming
onto Golden State Cellular. Alas, on T-Mobile, and presumably on any
CDMA prepaid that can't roam (Virgin) that area is a wasteland. It's a
popular summer route over the Sierra's. Yosemite National Park and the
surrounding areas also lack T-Mobile coverage. I was hoping that there
would be new roaming in these areas due to the failed acquisition, but
there was not.

A couple of winters ago we arrived in Yosemite, in a snowstorm, and the
place we were staying (Yosemite West) had not left out a key as promised
and of course the office was closed. I was so glad to have Verizon in
that area of the park which had no AT&T or T-Mobile coverage, only CDMA
via Golden State Cellular (latitude 37.647 and longitude -119.718). I'm
very impressed with Golden State Cellular as they've put towers in
places that AT&T has totally ignored.

Experts agree that if you have T-Mobile, you should carry a Pageplus
prepaid phone with you as a back-up when you travel outside urban areas.