T-Mobile roaming

[space-time]

I have a T-Mobile prepaid cellphone. When I travel north, upstate NY, I lose the T-Mobile signal but I pick up Unicell or another smaller local carrier. And in Canada I picked up Rogers.

But here at home in NJ there are dead spots, like in my house. There is ATT signal though. I know because I can see the "Cingular" network from my phone, if I enter in manual search, but the phone will refuse to register with Cingular. I am sure there must be spots where one could pick up T-Mobile signal but no ATT.

Why don't T-Mobile and ATT share each other's network? they would have to put up fewer towers and would make more customers happy.

[Winston]

Two reasons:

1. T-Mobile restricts the roaming on pre-paid phones. I am actually surprised it worked on non-T-Mobile networks at all. They offer better roaming coverage if you have a monthly account.

2. T-Mobile and Cingular (now AT&T Wireless) used to have an extensive roaming agreement. When Cingular, then owned by SBC and BellSouth, bought the old AT&T Wireless from the old AT&T the government forced Cingular out of some or all of that relationship. (Since then SBC bought both the old AT&T and BellSouth, and changed the Cingular name to AT&T Wireless and the entire company to AT&T.)

Cingular used to use T-Mobile towers in New York City (I don't think they had any of their own, but probably got some from the old AT&T Wireless). They were forced to put in new towers, which I suspect is one reason NYC has had problems for iPhone users. Not sure what T-Mobile got out of the government's deal, but they must have gotten something. The point was to increase competition since Cingular was removing a competitor by purchasing AT&T wireless.


Good luck.

- Winston