Just recently purchased HTC Droid Incredible, Live in VZW extended network area... bad news !

[painthorsman]

I recently bought an new VZW HTC Droid Incredible... when they sold me the phone at our local store... 75 miles away in Havre MT, they showed me a coverage map... it showed the area I live in in dark red.. proudly proclaiming that I had very good 3 G coverage... which is all true..... problem is, they didnt tell me that I live in an area that the Verizon coverage is actually ALLTEL , which in several western states, is being sold or has sold to AT&T.

      What that means for Alltel customers bought out by Verizon and sold to AT&T in the western states, is they will all get new GSM phones on the AT&T network and it will all be good.... NOT !

For the hundreds of actual Verizon customers that live in the area... including me, who have been told we had verizon coverage and then later found out that we were actually operating in Verizons primary roaming partners network ( Alltel )... It means when the ALLTEL towers switch to GSM in January.... Real Verizon customers will no longer have a signal.. Verizon and Alltel were CDMA but the takeover company AT&T is GSM... they dont talk to each other or roam on each other, completely incompatible with each other to the point that the only call a CDMA phone can make in a GSM area and vice versa is.... 911.  What that all means is where I used to be able to use my phone seamlessly in the majority of Montana... now I will have big splotches of 911 only ability.

Verizon was forced by the govt to sell its western Alltel holdings but in selling them to a GSM only company like AT&T... they also threw hundreds, maybe thousands of long term Verizon customers, with Verizon equipment... not Alltel equipment.. to the wolves.

What it all boils down to is in about three months, my wonderful new Droid Incredible, will no longer work in my home area and I will have to drive about 30-40 miles outside of my home area, where it currently works fine... to get a usable signal... Anyone out there also experiencing this issue?.. any way to put pressure on VZW to keep CDMA in areas that will suddenly lose Verizon coverage after AT&T takes over Alltel ?? This affects all of North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, parts of Nevada and several other states.

[budone]

ATT is not allowed to shut down the CDMA towers I believe for at least two years, to give others time to build out their systems. Also they are banned doing so due to roaming agreements already in place.

[painthorsman]

Yes... thats what I hear from the local VZW store after I stormed in there last week ... convienantly past my thirty day return/bail out period. But it's not the tune I'm hearning from people higher up the food chain in Customer Service and Tech Support.. in fact they are telling me now that there is a likely loss of coverage to Verizon customers in Alltel areas that are switching to AT&T and that they will allow some people to get out of their VZW contracts because of it.... I dont know who to believe.  Our ranch also has some phones on Alltel which will become AT&T... those contracts will all get new GSM phones... which by the way, will not work in predominatly CDMA Verizon areas... Those phones will work in a 20 mile radius around the town of Chester MT... nowhere else, til they get down to Great Falls or Billings.. also Alltel Takover areas by AT&T.

Personally, having VZW and happy with the service .. I dont want to lose it... I've HAD AT&T in the past and hated them.,.. they can keep their vaunted I Phone and "fast" 3G network.. they also had horrible customer service, dropped calls and no call areas out of this world... and some of the most expensive wireless plans on the planet.... no thanks.

My wife has Alltel... she was promised that her current cdma phone would be replaced with a gsm phone as close as possible to her current one. While AT&T has her exact model of phone branded something else by AT&T.. it is not on the list of phones they will replace hers with... It was all a lie... they will replace it with someting close in features.. not exactly like. So her several hundred dollar upgrade phone this past year will get replaced with a "free" bottom of the barrel one with like features... Another reason I hate AT&T. To get the exact one, requires another $200-$300 and a new 2 yr AT&T contract, which wipes out the 6 yr old Alltel grandfathered  one.. btw that has a better minute, free calling numbers and data plan that anything AT&T has.