Almost every morning as I leave my building, I have to turn the phone off and on to get it registered on AT&T and off of Bell Atlantic, where James Earl Jones answers every call, no matter who I'm trying to call. http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

I have been an AT&T oneRate customer for the last 5 months. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied. I'm saving a hell of a lot in long distance/roaming fees when travelling. The coverage has been pretty good in the cities I travel to, as well as my home market.

The Tri-Mode phone is great, you can get coverage pretty much anywhere. Except in my office building, where nobody gets coverage from any carrier.

I have used ATT DOR plan for last 6 months... I have always experienced some problems that I have associated to areas that I travel to. This was until recently when calling technical support for a problem while in Mobile, AL.
Support said that the prefix number I was assigned was the reason I recieved no service in Mobile. Amswer was to change my cellular number... (Didn't make sense as to why this would make a difference...)
Well, I was able to make / receive calls in Mobile. Unfortunately now the phone ALWAYS dials via analog. I am getting a digial signal (D on face...) and am within an ATT area (AT&T on face). But every call switches to analog on connection...
I am taking the phone in for service to AT&T in Colorado Springs tomorrow for them to check the programming, etc...
Very frustrating because most of I-70 through Kansas only has Digital towers, so now (unlike before) I get no signal...
We'll see if they can figure this out.

Just to add a quick note here...

I've was in Houston for the past 6 days and my AT&T phone was on Extended Area the entire trip. Checked with some of my colleagues and they had the same on their phones.

But, I used the phone all week and had no signal problems or outages the entire time (even in the Conv. Center & my hotel room).

Don't know how relevant this is for AT&T (maybe mostly Nokia phones) - but I have some challenges with GTE in CA and the digital/analog coverage patterns.

I have a really long commute with some zones being strong analog, others strong digital. If you know you are in one of these zones and you have a Motorola digital StarTac, you can force the phone to use analog or digital by pressing (FCN)2. This will toggle between the two modes until you end the next call.

Other dual-mode phones may have similar features, as well.

[This message has been edited by greg99 (edited 10-20-1999).]

greg, usually with the Nokia & Ericsson phones and AT&T one-rate, the phone automatically switches between digital & analog.

I did notice when I was travelling I-5 South, between LA & SD there were some dead spots near the Marine base. Thought that was probably due to military aircraft interference.

Can clear up a bunch of these things:

Issue in Mobile where the prefix was not allowed: Each area code/exchange in cellular "stands alone" and is individually announced to the carriers all over the country. It is very common to have an update with a specific area code/exchange missed. Your home carrier contacts the serving carrier (roaming partner) to get them to enter the area code/exchange in their system to allow roaming.

Issue in Houston--AT&T doesn't offer service in Houston, but was formerly a 1/2 owner with BellSouth in Houston Cellular. Same situation in Los Angeles with LA Cellular. BellSouth and AT&T split the two markets, with AT&T getting Los Angeles and BellSouth getting Houston. Part of the deal was that both AT&T and BellSouth could continue to offer preferential rates to each other's D-O-R customers in either area. Service should be pretty transparent in Houston--as AT&T was earlier involved the systems work together well.

D-O-R phones generally have very limited ability for the user to change digital to analog or to change carriers. The appropriate carriers (particularly for AT&T) are loaded into the handset and can't be changed. This is to keep you from (in)advertently costing them money by changing to a non-preferred program.

When I said earlier that GTE was offering a single-rate plan for the entire United States, it extends to only those customers whose home GTE market (San Francisco/Tampa/Cleveland, for instance) is a digital market. In rural New Mexico, they probably have not converted to digital and so aren't offering the D-O-R plans.

I've been in this business for the last 7 years (cellular roaming services) and had an interesting thing happen--I know the business inside out but I had never had a phone before with an unlimited roaming package, but got one 2 weeks ago with Powertel in Atlanta (they offer unlimited roaming for $30/month, 120 minutes which is unusually low). Took a trip to Miami, (served by Omnipoint) and really noticed a difference in my behavior--I didn't think about bypassing the hotel phone with the cellular--it came very naturally.

jl

thanks for the 'tech stuff', jamie...

The service WAS transparent in Houston, even though on Ext. Range. No noticeable difference in clarity, sound, connect time, etc. than regular AT&T 'home' area.

jamiel: Can't it also be said that keeping the customers from switching to analog at will is part of the marketing strategy of Digital One Rate? I.E. they really need, except when absolutely necessary, to keep you on a digital system, where their subscriber capacity is much greater.

richg--absolutely right. Occasionally a carrier will offer lower roaming rates to digital subscribers than analog subscribers (either carrier-to-carrier or retail). D-O-R limit your choices of carriers to roam on which can be good or bad, depending on your view.