Digital cellular coverage

[Dhirendra Kubair]

MCI does have coverage and the draw back (probably) is their plan
gives u only an analog phone but the rates are the best sofar in
cmi.
local area goes all the way upto AURORA and somewhere in indiana.

even ameritech is offering the same deal as MCI (i guess thro MCI)
same analog phone.

On Tue, 6 Jun 2000, Josh Birnbaum wrote:

> For all those following along, here's the latest in the "computer
> engineer tries to figure out cellular plans" saga...
>
> First off, I'm ignoring PrimeCo. One of my friends had them and
> warned me off. Cool phones but bad service.
>
> AT&T doesn't claim coverage anywhere near Champaign, though apparently
> the service does work (per suitemate from last year who used his phone
> frequently). Their prices are good, but nothing special.
>
> Sprint's prices seem to be the best. I would go with them except for
> Nextel's special offer.
>
> Which brings us to the continuing problems I have trying to extract
> information from Nextel. Two weeks (maybe a litle less) after I
> emailed them and mentioned that I could not view rate plans from the
> website for Champaign, they finally fixed it as of tonight. Since the
> website doesn't show the 'free incoming calls' you mentioned, I
> thought I would call them at their 800-NEXTEL9 sales number. Oh wait,
> all the person there could do was take my name and number and promise
> a call back "within 2 days".
>
> Side notes, MCI and CellularOne don't appear to have coverage in the
> area. Nor does Ameritech, though their prices seem really good.
>
> Maybe I'll get this figured out... someday
>
> --
> Josh Birnbaum
> jrbi...@uiuc.edu
>

[sdl]

Jeffrey Cook wrote:

> ... i'm looking forward to seeing what coverage I can get from sprint
> pcs .. if so, i'll have to pull the rom outta my phone to unlock the
> service provider lock since sprint pcs doesn't seem to have any good
> phone deals on a good phone.

Hey, thanks for this information. I'm becoming a little more wary of
Primeco as the stories roll in. This last comment... that indicated that
the phones can be used on different providers? Is it a difficult task to
change them over? I thought there was some code you could punch in, to
allow programming by another service (but maybe it's not that easy). I'd
considered buying a used phone, but if I'm going to run into complications
when switching service providers, it may not be worth the hassle.

Scott L.

[Jeffrey J. Cook]

Well actually at least for my phone, you desolder the rom from the phone,
put it in your local rom reader and read off a particular address which
then gives you the x digit service provider lock code ... haven't tried it
yet and don't preach that desoldering the rom will be easy, since it's prolly
a very fine pitch smt rom ... though it does have a serial interface ...
if you do have the nokia 6185 like me, a quick search of deja should turn up
the proper address to read from the phone

Jeffrey J. Cook
University of Illinois Computer Engineering Student
jjc...@uiuc.edu

"Sometimes the easiest way to get something done is to be a little naïve
about it -- and just ship it."
Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems - Jini Engineer