Montana Cellular Reviews

Mountain Wireless presents an opinionated review of cellular services in Montana. This is information gained from personal experience, user interviews, press releases, advertising material, newsgroups and wireless web sites. For Ratings of these carriers, Click Here.

ALLTEL
Alltel has agreed to be purchased by Verizon Wireless. This transaction is not expected to be completed until 2009. While we feel this is not a good deal for the cellular consumer, there is no reason to avoid signing up with Alltel for now. Most plans will be honored and the changeover will be relatively painless. We are following developments on the Mountain Wireless Blog. In the meantime, Alltel covers more real estate in the US than any other carrier. Most of that territory is rural and in those areas they are often the best carrier available. Both in the rural and areas and the large cities they serve they have very good coverage, good customer service and utilize a fairly advanced network. You can take your Alltel phone into most urban areas and still get excellent coverage and reliable data service. To achieve this goal, Alltel phones will roam on Sprint more often than other carriers. Sprint has good broadband services, but after the ownership change you will be roaming on Verizon's huge network, which covers more territory that Sprint. Alltel offers "Local" and "No-Roaming-Charges-Anywhere" plans, and is the only large carrier that offers a "North American" plan which includes roaming calls from Mexico and Canada. Expect this to go away under Verizon, but may be 'grandfathered.' With Alltel's domination of rural coverage, they are the king of roaming carriers, serving roamers from most of the other carriers, primarily in the western half of the US. They offer CDMA service to their own customers and roamers, and GSM service for roamers, but not in all areas. They have been aggressive in pricing their plans and features, and also offer a basic, Unlimited plan. Pros: Good coverage, very good prices, a variety of plans, good customer service, good broadband services including while roaming. Cons: Roaming may be a problem when favoring Sprint, fewer phone choices, Alltel isn't aggressively adding new towers.
Get Online Discounts on Alltel Phones

CELLULAR ONE (Montana)
Cellular One is the unfortunate choice of a new name for Chinook Wireless. It is unfortunate in that there was a Cellular One in Montana before, and there is no relationship between the two, but there is still a perception of what Cellular One once was, for better or worse. This Cellular One has aligned itself with a few other small "Cellular One's" elsewhere in the country with no benefit to Montana customers. We like to deal with a local company more than a big, ugly "national" company, but we'll deal with it. Cellular One seems to be identical to the old Chinook which includes a usable network that operates on PCS frequencies which limits coverage to in-town and along main roads. They offer all the digital goodies. They use GSM technology which offers phones not available elsewhere in the state. Pros: Local folks, they offer a variety of plans including various options of National plans and Unlimited with a 'balance' of roaming and local minutes, a 'rollover'-type option, good customer service. Cons: Their coverage is weak away from main roads and outside of populated areas, with no GSM roaming agreement with Alltel there are huge areas with no coverage across the west.
Chinook's Final Local Coverage Map

CHINOOK WIRELESS
Chinook is now known as Cellular One (Montana).

MID RIVERS CELLULAR
Mid Rivers covers the east central part of Montana. They offer some somewhat-dated digital phones and an analog bag phone. They are part of a local telephone co-op, so they are pretty friendly, and easy to deal with. Their calling plans are a little overpriced, but they offer lots of roaming minutes, presumably national. There are extra charges for each different feature like Caller ID, Voice Mail, Long Distance, etc, but are free, if you ask for them, with some plans. No contract is required.

SAGEBRUSH CELLULAR
They cover northeastern Montana. They have good coverage across their area, and have regional and Unlimited plans. They have added new CDMA digital sites, but don't appear to be converting existing sites, you can roam in adjacent states and provinces. Pros: Good coverage, a variety of plans, Unlimted plans available. Cons: Voice Mail and long distance charges are extra, their non-Unlimited plans aren't very generous, most of their towers are still analog-only, no national plans.