[ale] [OT] Time for a Cell Phone Change

[Pat Regan]

On Sun, 1 May 2011 08:00:11 -0400
Greg Clifton <gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:

> in the future. So when ALL the majors go to LTE, coverage should
> become a non-issue (again, assuming they don't do anything evil
> regarding roaming charges). It is also a GSM technology, so should
> eventually work worldwide so all phones will be "world phones" (I
> also have a daughter who works with MSF, leaves for Nigeria on Tu, so
> would be nice for her to have one device that could work anywhere
> just by swapping out a sim chip where she currently has two handsets).

I'll believe it when I see it :).  ATT and tmo have roaming agreements
today, and I've been using tmo for quite a few years now.  I've very
rarely roamed on att, but I have roamed on some odd regional carriers
in the boonies before.

I'm not allowed to roam onto att towers if I am within a tmo coverage
area, even if the signal strength on the att towers would be better or
if the att tower has 3g and the tmo has 2g (like the tower closest to
home for me, the only tower in town that is only 2g :p).

Even if the phones have all the necessary frequencies this will likely
always be the case.  If you have the potential to get any usable signal
at all then the carrier isn't going to want to pay someone else for you
to make use of their tower.

Pat