More Web Site Updates. While the wireless world keeps on changing, we've been spending most of our time working on improving this web site. A few months ago we sat down and improved or updated ever other page, but in the last few weeks we've been working on the Home page. It's more than giving it a new look, there is more information on it and more connected to it.

We added a new Navigation bar that will eventually make it on to all our web pages so you can get around the site better. We also made a deal to sell cellular phones right here on our site. You'll have a choice to choose a new phone and then the service to go with it, or you can start with the wireless carrier of your choice and go from there. While we're trying not to get "too" commercial, we still need to cover our costs. So, when you are in the market for a new phone or service, we hope you visit one of our shopping pages, first.

Most of the changes will be going online within the next week. It's scary stuff to let your youngest out in to the real world.

August 20, 2007 The Case For Comparison. Way too many cellular buyers depend on the ad pitches, and not enough research on their own part. "Most Reliable", "More Bars", "More Minutes", are relatively worthless if you don't have adequate coverage. And the only way to know, is to try it.

I hear from so many people who want a certain carrier for less than solid reasons, then later want to get out for lack of coverage. Ego is a big motivator and we all hate to admit we're wrong. But our pride will only carry our calls so far. It's time to take advantage of the "Tryout." Every cellular carrier will give you at least two weeks to try their service, and some go for as long as 30 days. Use that time. You may need to pay for your calls, but it is time and money invested now to save money and frustration later.

A few weeks ago our whole family spent some time in the mountains, some camping, some at a resort. Family number one had acceptable cellular service at the resort with their AT&T phone, roaming on Alltel's GSM network, and a poor, sometimes analog, signal from Verizon. Meanwhile, family number two had no service with Verizon at the campground, but got some service on T-Mobile. But when everyone got together for a family horse ride and picnic, the AT&T phones wouldn't work, and the Verizon phones did. All the trail cowboys had Verizon phones. They all had the same ringer as each other, which was the same as mine, which led to lots of confusion. I eventually set mine to "Vibrate."

These isolated pockets of coverage demonstrate how variable the coverage can be within a very small area. But if you have a number of phones to try during your tryout period, a few other surprises may come. The phone with the best coverage in our group was the T-Mobile phone which was also roaming on Alltel's GSM signal. The trusty old Nokia was noticeably better than the AT&T Samsungs roaming on the same carrier.

When asked "which is best", we always answer, "try them all." You might not want to be bothered, but often the results are surprising. The iPhone you've wanted may not come close to the coverage offered by another fancy phone on another carrier, but if you didn't try them all out where you live, work and play, you might never know. No, you don't need to take home six phones for the weekend, but three is good enough, and if you're switching from another carrier, you already have your old phone to compare. So two might be adequate, and they could come from the same cellular store. Use your credit card and you can return the poorer performing phones before the bill arrives.

If you don't "try it", you've got no reason to complain. Or, if you do, it can be from a position of knowledge. You'll know who is "best."

July 30, 2007. A Verizon GSM Surprise. Verizon Wireless announced today they have agreed to buy Rural Cellular Corp. the parent company of Unicel, a regional cellular provider. Here is the map of Unicel's Licensed Service Area. It has been some time since Verizon has made a purchase this size.

Verizon Wireless claims they will realize a $1 Billion yearly savings as a result of their $2.7 Billion purchase of Unicel. Wow, that is one large roaming bill, but most of it is currently on networks other than Unicel. in a world of multi-million dollar expenses, it could very well be true. Verizon only picks up 700,000 Unicel customers, so the new income won't offset that many expenses. But that's not the big surprise.

Hell just might be starting to freeze over as Verizon also announced that while they will be converting all the Unicel GSM customers to CDMA phones, they will maintain the existing Unicel GSM network for roamers. Unicel uses GSM only in their western markets.

For a died-in-the-wool CDMA advocate like Verizon to even admit that there are any GSM customers worth serving, this is a cats-living-with-dogs, Hatfields-getting-along-with-McCoys, Republicans-agreeing-with-Democrats situation. Sure, Verizon sells a phone with GSM in it for people who insist on traveling internationally with a Verizon-branded phone. But hey, that's for people in other counties, not this one, where CDMA is king…right?

AT&T went with GSM technology more as an accident, but now that they've adopted it, they consider it golden, at least until the next technological step is taken. To them, there just is no reason to even allow CDMA to exist. Verizon Wireless and other CDMA carriers feel the same way about GSM. Could this be a step toward detente? Are we somehow approaching the technological common ground (that W-CDMA may be taking us, anyway)? Do we really get to visit Oz?

Our take is more along the lines of economic reality. Unicel must be making a boatload on GSM roaming fees and Verizon ain't gonna stop that gravy train from running. It is the CDMA roaming fees that Verizon is hoping to reduce, and currently those are being paid to other networks than Unicel.

So, even if Verizon's support of GSM makes no sense to us, it must make sense to the bean counters, and we always listen when they say 'can you hear me now'.

July 17, 2007, Want More Minutes? Just Ask! In the wake of the flap caused by Sprint when they cancelled about 1,000 customers due to excessive calls to customer service, I'm going to give them (not just Sprint, but all the carriers) even more headaches. Don't let the carriers take the "Service" out of 'Customer Service."

We customers often have problems, some caused by the carrier and some caused by ourselves. We always recommend giving the carrier a chance to correct both problems. One of the most common self-inflicted wounds is running out of minutes before we run out of month. In many cases the carriers will be able to spot you a few minutes to help you get through the tough times.

As with any call to customer Service, you might need to press the issue. Don't use additional "force", just use multiple pleas. You might use the terms, "what can I do?' instead of "what can you do?" The agent needs to look at your records to see if you've been naughty or nice. Don't expect to be given anything if you're always asking. But the vast majority of us just grin and bear it when we could be asking for forgiveness. At my old job i could not believe how many colleagues just paid overages each month, when with a call to customer service they could change to a more economical plan, or ask for a few extra minutes for a short 'emergency.' Quite often the request for extra minutes for this month goes down a little easier when you ask for a more expensive plan for next month. And with most carriers, you can change back if your circumstances change again.

Dare i say customer service is a fairly easy call while you're driving, although I advise you to punch all the appropriate keys before you start your trip. I have solved almost all of my cell phone problems on the commute to work. Hopefully your commute is longer than 10 minutes.Some of your time should be spent with pleasantries with a potentially harried agent. And your results can vary depending on which agent you speak with. Some are more willing to help than others, and each carrier has different instructions for each service crew depending on the corporate philosophy of the moment.

The next question is why does Sprint have so many customers who feel it is necessary to call customer service so often? Is it because they really have legitimate concerns, or do they need someone to talk to on the way to work?

July 9, 2007. Do the Math! We hear from so many users who talk about the smartest way to roam, or the cheapest way to make calls, or how to make unlimited calls to friends. So many of these people are using shared or "family" plans, and completely overlook the biggest savings they might gain by switching to individual plans. In some cases it's smart to have a family plan, but when one family member needs something special, like unlimited Text Messaging, you need to pay it for all members of the family. But before you change, some carriers are now "bundling" several features into their plans, ,so check for those, first.

One of the sneaky strategies of the wireless carriers was to eliminate the $50 price point among their plans, the one that could save a lot for families if they switch to individual plans. Maybe you just can't shave your wireless costs, especially now that most carriers have eliminated Local and Regional plans that could benefit a family member whose phone never leaves their home area. But much can be saved just if you just have a Mobile to Mobile package and all your calls are are unlimited to each other.

Either way, with so many families with these shared plans, or at least phones on the same network, there are still some tricks you can play to save minutes. Say Bob and his wife Betty are both on the same carrier, with a Family or Mobile to Mobile feature. They are out to dinner together and Bob sees he has a voice mail. Instead of picking up his own phone, he picks up Betty's. He calls his own wireless phone number, presses his access code and listens to his voice mail messages. He's not using any of his minutes, he's on a call from Betty's phone to his phone (yes, he probably annoyed all the other restaurant patrons with his ringing phone), which is considered part of their unlimited Mobile to Mobile minutes.

Sure, Bob and Betty aren't together all the time, but they are together a lot after work and away from home. What about the kids? It's good to have a sibling, or how about a friend also on the same network. Yep, switch phones for a few minutes and check your own voice mail on your friend's phone. It's a free call. Just as good is to have a "Favorites" plan with your buddy's number included.

This gets to be an even more valuable workaround when you decide to go all wireless at home. I know I won't save any money going to VoIP, but dumping the landline would be a big savings, especially when almost half the bill is just taxes. Or, it might be time to talk about T-Mobile's combination wireless/wi-fi plan with unlimited usage at home and T-Mobile Hot Spots.

But that brings up another issue. And before you decide to go one of these routes...do the math. Confusion works to benefit the wireless carriers, but you can fight back with a pencil and a calculator. These awesome tools can make wireless marketing execs quake in their boots, if customers would just have the courage to use them. En garde!

June 28, 2007. Hey! Who Increased Those Long Distance Rates? Have you checked your wireline phone bills for the long distance rates you're paying? You might be in for a shock! While a huge portion of the country is now using their wireless phone to make their long distance calls, the other long distance companies have been quietly raising rates.

We noticed a 120% increase on in-state rates on our wireline bill and wondered what else has been happening to LD rates while we have all been happily chatting away on our wireless phones for the last few years. Not only did we find some rates more than doubled, we found some of these rates can't be changed, only the whole account can be cancelled.

Every once in a while, it's just easier to just pick up a wireline phone and make a call, that just happens to be long distance, and not really care about the extra charges...until now. In some cases, you just can't make a wireless call as a wireline substitute, and that's where our surprises have been coming from. Making calls from hotels, using your calling card at an office or a friend's house, or calling from out of the country generates the kind of charges we just haven't seen for years.

And just when you think you have the long-distance-on-wireless situation covered, a carrier like Verizon goes and drops their North America's Choice plan (see last week's story, below) which means you may not be paying LD charges on calls made from outside the US, but you are paying up to $1 a minute roaming charges!

The 'heads up' here is that wireless phone coverage is now more important than ever. If your 'Plan B' is to use your calling card or the hotel phone, don't be surprised at being charged $2 per minute...or more! And make sure you know how to use your phone when traveling so you're not stuck with these ripoff options as your only choice. While roaming you may need to call your own cellular phone's number to access your voice mail instead of codes like "*86", and while out of the country you'll most likely need an entirely different prefix to access numbers in the US. Fortunately, on GSM phones you can just add a "+" in front of the number you are calling and the system enters the right codes for you.

We have come to depend on our cellular phones working everywhere, and when they don't, making calls can be pricey. I can see why some people are getting away from wire lines altogether, but even they might need a backup when traveling. What's yours? Some of our friends just say, "where my wireless phone doesn't work, i don't want to be..." Then plan your trips carefully, my friend.

June 19, 2007. What happened to CDMA? As of last month, Verizon Wireless discontinued their "North America's Choice" plan, which allowed subscribing customers to roam freely across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Verizon's explanation is that some of their CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access - Verizon's digital technology) roaming partners in Mexico and Canada have "decommissioned" their network. Did they really turn off CDMA? And just what happened to the coverage there? Did it go away...or is it being switched to GSM? Additionally, Verizon will also be increasing their roaming fees in Mexico from .69/minute to .99. What's really going on?

If a roaming network was going to stop using CDMA, wouldn't the situation take care of itself? Turned off or converted, Verizon should not fear customers incurring more costs if there's no network to roam on. So why discontinue the plan and raise roaming charges? Are we talking about a reduction in service or an increase in costs? Mexico coverage maps do show missing coverage in northern Mexico.

Let's first look at a reduction in service. If suddenly fewer sites across North America have CDMA available, should the highest-profile CDMA carrier, Verizon, be implying that CDMA is going the way of Morse Code? Is this throwing in the towel? And are Sprint, Alltel and other CDMA carriers around the world beginning to worry? This seems a bit too much to handle, so let's look at the other side of the coin.

What if Verizon's North America's Choice plan just became too popular? So popular that customers were traveling to these countries and actually using their phones there? While Verizon didn't give unlimited off-peak minutes to North America's Choice users, they could have underestimated how many roaming minutes customers would rack up, and, while not truly losing money on these plans, were not making the nice, juicy profits they are accustomed to with their other offerings. Ouch, does that mean, even at .69 a minute, they can't make any profit?

I know that Mexico has changed the rules and has switched to a more European-like "Calling Party Pays" style of billing. And calls to and from that country are still chock full of fees, long-distance charges and per-call taxes. But is it enough to completely remove the North America's Choice plans? Why not just raise the price? And if it's a money-loser, why did Verizon grandfather these plans for existing users?

I bet we we'll see some new plans, especially for Canada whose roaming prices seem to be improving. But the real story here is that if you can use a plan, like North America's Choice, and the older, "SingleRate" plans, get 'em while you can, and think twice before changing. The "new" AT&T hasn't announced anything about their North American roaming plans, but you can bet changes are brewing. And if isn't in higher rates, then it might be in the slow defection of Verizon Wireless customers.

A side note, for those of us who roam in Mexico, TelCel, a GSM carrier, has reduced their prepaid calling rates a bit, but even at .99 per minute, Verizon's roaming charge is still cheaper than most other options. Even your hotel charges $2US just to access the 800 number for your prepaid calling card.

Web Site update: We stopped for a few weeks to see how everything works. We're looking for broken links and how many people actually miss the deleted pages. The search engines have let us know something's missing, but readers haven't, so we'll assume everyone's happy. We are, and thanks for visiting!

June 11, 2007. Some Good Wireless Phone Suggestions. With the addition of the "Prepare Your Using Phone in an Emergency" tips on our Wireless Tips page, these ideas could be a life saver. We'd like to share the cool ideas on that page that many users have thanked us for:

• GET A MORE "BUSINESSLIKE" PHONE NUMBER FOR YOUR CELLULAR PHONE
• THREE WAYS TO GET OUT OF YOUR CELLULAR CONTRACT
• HOW TO MAKE YOUR PHONE ROAM (or NOT Roam) TO ACCESS A STRONGER SIGNAL
• PREPARE FOR USING YOUR PHONE IN AN EMERGENCY
• GET A BETTER CARRIER BY SIGNING UP AT WORK
• CAN'T GET THE PLAN OR CARRIER YOU WANT IN YOUR AREA? SIGN UP WITH A DIFFERENT ADDRESS
• GET BETTER IN-BUILDING COVERAGE?
• GET RID OF THE SECOND LINE INTO YOUR HOME
• SET YOUR NETWORK TO "AUTO A OR AUTO B"?
• HOW TO GET AN OLD PRL ON YOUR PHONE
• GET A PROMOTIONAL PLAN AND A NEW PHONE AT THE SAME TIME

We're also looking for new ideas to share. We can't offer "gee whiz" features like the wireless carriers, but we love it when you say, "gee, i hadn't thought about that." It's what we say all the time.

June 5,2007 Beware...the "Bundle". Every communications company is offering a "bundle", a package of communications services that includes a small discount in return for subscribing to multiple services from a single company or its affiliates. In some case, it's a good thing. In others, it's a huge mistake.

The ads on TV ask you to "do the math", and you should. But make sure you are comparing apple to apples, and high-speed broadband to high-speed broadband. Your local phone company usually offers telephone, broadband internet, wireless and maybe TV...and so does your cable system. But on a smaller scale, every cellular carrier wants you to bunch up the whole family on one of their "family" plans. Watch out!

The advantage of a "family" plan is that you should be sharing all the available minutes with several users increasing the efficiency of your plan, and doing it for only $10 or $20 a month more, right? Hah, got you fooled. The only 'advantage' is to the carrier. Once you have a bundle, it's a hassle to split up the different services, even if you save money.

First, these shared plans are normally more expensive to begin with, and second, with each person added to your account so does the complexity, and expense, of added options. Mom & Dad can do without any Texting features, but if you add the kids, you need it. Then there's the phones. When you first signed up, sure, all 4 of the phones were free, but at upgrade time, only the first phone may be free. And what you if you don't have detailed billing, or at least don't look at it. If one family yakker goes overboard, you don't know whodunnit, so you need to increase to the next more expensive plan.

I re-assess all the family's various plans every year to make sure there isn't some way to save money by combining, or separating, plans. And, in our case, almost everyone is on their own separate plan, and the savings are substantial. One member never roams, so a local plan is better. Another is so light a user she has a prepaid plan from another carrier. Yet another has such an old plan that she pays only $7 a month and .31 a minute (yes, that one's bundled), but she's waaaay ahead than if she were to change plans. But you wouldn't know that by talking to the carrier. They claim switching will "save you money".

Please..."Do the Math".

Mountain Wireless Web Site Update: Last week we thought we were nearing the end of our page-by-page upgrade of the MountainWireless.com web site. As of today, we have made detailed changes to over 120 pages, and that does not include 60 pages of just PRL's. Visit our Home Page for a list of pages that have been significantly updated, and a few completely new, like How to Switch Wireless Carriers. Expect more new stuff as we weed out the old. I just can't figure out why a comparison of the Mobile to Mobile coverage of (the old) AT&T and Verizon from 2002 is still popular. And who is searching for phones that can no longer be used on today's wireless networks?

If you you haven't nosed around in a while, there are almost 200 pages in this web site, and our Site Map leads you to most of them. The Search Tool might sniff out a few more. Gosh, it's still a work in progress!

May 28, 2007. "Unlimited Minutes" is Catching On! Recently Sprint announced that their trial run of offering Unlimited calling is being expanded. This is the pot of gold at the end of the wireless rainbow. Cellular carriers may see the day when offering "minutes" will be secondary to all the other services they can offer. But these plans actually include data and text messaging.

Sprint's trial run was in the San Francisco Bay area and now it is being expanded to other markets including Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Tampa. The price is still in the mid-$100's, but for big-time talkers, this is certainly a step in the right direction. We can guess that Sprint saw increased numbers of people walking through the door and have decided it's worth trying elsewhere.

There are many small carriers who offer Unlimited plans and even Qwest, a Sprint network re-seller, had an Unlimited plan. It's no small deal when a major carrier like Sprint gets involved. This is actually a reasonable plan for parents to give to their teenagers. They could easily run up even higher bills with a "lower"-priced plan. It's still higher than the Unlimited offerings from the smaller carriers, but it's now just a matter of 'convergence', right?

Mountain Wireless Web Site Update. In a previous article we reported a total top-to-bottom update of this web site, and it has turned into quite an undertaking. We started with the most-visited pages and worked our way down. That was 75 pages ago and we're still at it. Information that was first posted in 2002 is still getting hits, so it's quite a challenge finding a way to direct visitors to updated information. A few pages are so dated they have been deleted, others now forward you to an updated page, and most others have been reviewed and re-written. Oh my, that typo has been there for 5 years?

Recently updated highlights include: a New carrier Pros & Cons page, site search boxes, updated and changed "3Net Map", a new SID list, updated map page, a few new State reviews, a new batch of wireless Tips, updated choices on the Our Choice page, disclaimers indicating which pages contain dated information, and lots of specific carrier updates. We hope you find the information useful, and that you'll click on our links and ads when you buy online. It's how this web site survives.

May 21, 2007. Alltel to be Sold - Good News/Bad News?. It appears to be a done deal. Today it was announced that Alltel will be sold for $27.5 Billion to TPG Capital (formerly Texas Pacific Group), and GS Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of The Goldman Sachs Group. The good news? For the time being, it looks like business as usual. If anything, there's the possibility of expansion. The investors claim to be gearing up for the coming FCC 700 MHz auction. In that auction, Alltel, and possibly others, could suddenly become a "nationwide" carrier.

The Bad News? "Private-equity" investors like these tend to do bad things to a company. Historically, they often "optimize' their profits, which could mean layoffs or reductions in service. Or they could sell off some of their assets which could range from selling a few towers, to selling entire parts of the network. At such a high price, they usually need to do something to justify investing that much money. Overall, we find this the most desirable outcome.

"Cingular" takes one more step toward the grave. The "AT&T" name will become the dominant symbol of the company that internally is known as "AT&T Mobility". Stores are being changed over the next month with a deadline to coincide with the mid-June introduction of the Apple iPhone. The 'jack' will bow out, and those customers who were confused about the changes at AT&T Wireless before, will become even more confused.

The next step in the process changes the reference from "Cingular is now the new AT&T", to "Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular". We won't make light of any of the past names and mistakes, since our objective is to clarify. But that doesn't keep us from laughing, and noting the millions of dollars that are spent changing the name every few years. Invest in AT&T? No, invest in sign companies.