Can LTE Be Rural America's Internet Savior? > No

reply to tman852

Re: No

I hope you're able to keep it as long as possible. I assume you're in an area that was acquired by VZW (as I am) rather than divested and dumped on AT&T since your Alltel card still works.

Hang onto it. I let go of my unlimited plan earlier this month after years of wrangling and a speed of 40Kb (on a good day). We went without internet for a month last year and it was incredibly stressful, trying to find a free wifi spot in town for our daughter to do her homework, process her college information...and then risk paying a bill online and hope you don't get your account hacked.

In this day and age, it's next to impossible for kids to do well in school without reliable internet access.

reply to ShellMMG
Well, *I* was "dumped" on AT&T. Sure my *ALLTEL* card doesn't still work. I now have an HSPA+ card, on the same Alltel plan ($36/month unlimited), with speeds ranging from 2-6mbps. Sometimes a bit higher even. And with coverage far, far better than what Alltel ever had since AT&T has aggressively expanded the network in my area (western Montana).

Sounds like your experience with transition from Alltel sucked, and yet you still use words that imply "at least I didn't end up on AT&T". Why is this attitude so prevalent? AT&T's simply poured money into the Alltel divested markets, and greatly enhanced speeds, reliability, and coverage (though it was kinda bad at launch since there was no roaming and some capacity issues, that was all quickly resolved, and now they cover so many places in the state that have never seen a cell signal before).

Whereas Verizon basically integrated the Alltel gear, removed some redundancies (for some people this is better, some worse), and did not much else.

Why are you glad you ended up on Verizon?

reply to elray
Uh no that's a Waldorf school. That's not a typical school. I gather you aren't familiar with their philosophy on teaching, children, and life. It is very relaxed, back to basics and back to nature, one might say hippy dippy style of teaching. They purposefully do not want technology in their schools.

reply to Markie
AT&T hasn't deployed 3G in my area. We still get their EDGE network...and the signal is weak. In fact, the entire county didn't get 3G from AT&T until LAST YEAR. The had the gall to open a shiny new store in the mall selling smartphones people couldn't even use on 3G.

reply to ShellMMG
No, we're still on Alltell. Did not get switched to anyone.

reply to ShellMMG
At first I thought you said entire country, LOL, it's amazing the difference an "r" makes . See, to me it appears you'd have been much better off if your Alltel account HAD ended up on AT&T. All of the Alltel coverage was converted to 3G+ (HSPA+, though not IP backhaul in most areas yet), and AT&T has been putting a lot of money into expansion in the former Alltel areas. So, I still don't really understand how your experience with AT&T as it is means that you're glad Verizon got Alltel in your area?

AT&T probably would have been a much better experience, at least after a bit. When AT&T first took over Alltel, there were some major issues here. But Verizon (ex-Alltel) customers, like yourself, had very similar issues at first - and in many cases they're still ongoing. What's ironic in that, is Verizon had a much simpler transition. Oddly enough, Atlantic Tele-Network ("new Alltel") and Element Mobile customers have had the most problems of all - and they had almost no work to do as they were still a completely independent CDMA provider. Splitting one network into four parts (and converting AT&T's part to UMTS while also keeping CDMA up) wasn't an easy task. But, of the providers who got parts of Alltel, only AT&T has - as of yet - invested into network upgrades and massive expansions in former Alltel territory.