Alltel/Verizon

Hello... Well, first let me state this... I am sorry if this has been asked already but I couldnt find it anywhere so I am making a new post... ANYWAYS TO THE POINT... Where I live, our local Verizon Tower(I am a Verizon customer...) is exactly 9 and half miles away from our town, as told to me by a Verzion sales rep... I have been with Verizon for a little over 3 years and knew to never expect more then at least 1 bar of 1x service where im from... which was OK... Until recently, Alltel Wireless built a tower no more then 20 feet outside of town, and when we lose Verizon's tower we are aloud to pick that tower up and use it at no cost... as Verizon and Alltel have an agreement to allow the sharing of towers without roaming charges... NOW I love that tower, when I get it, I get full service, I dont have to drive all over the place to attempt to get service to make a call, I can sit in my room and all is well... I called Verzion and was taking a tech guy... He said that Verizon's tower there is to far away for Verizon to continue to assure people that you get good service in town, as he said their tower only has a maxium range of rougly 6 miles to provide the service they would like you to have... So I had asked him if there was a way to set my phone up to just hit Alltel's tower all the time when I am at home or in town so I have service all the time instead of switching in and out of service... His response shocked me... He admitted, that since they have the agreement with Alltel to not charge roaming fees for using their tower that yes... they can switch a setting on the phone to have it pickup an Alltel tower first if it would give better service... So in a nut shell, I am stating that he said yes we can make your phone stay on extended network and use their tower at all times free of charge... BUT he would not do it!!! FOR the love of me i dont know... NOW to the point, sorry it took so long... I was wondering, if any of you knew any possibly way to do that, to switch from using only Verizon's tower regardless of service quality, and only switching when you dont have service... To bouncing off of Alltel's tower at all times... Is it possibly? well i know it is as i have been told already... But do any of you know how to do that?! I am using a vx9800... any help would be appreciate!!! Thank you, and im sorry i made you read so much!

There are several things to try. First, I think LG's have a "Mode" selection in the menu. Change the mode from "Auto" to "cell only", or one of the others to see if you can restrict the phone to look for Alltel's TYPE of system.

If not, then try to enter the NAM1 selection and change the Home SID to that for Alltel. You can look up your SID at this SID List. If it doesn't work you can return your phone to it's original SID by pressing *228.

Or, what I use, very low-tech, put the phone in your pants pocket which attenuates the VZW signal enough to automatically go into roam on Alltel.

and... a year later verizon is slated to buy alltel!

I assume that verizon will start using alltell's towers now. I hope so because my Dad lives in north Arkansas and my verizon will not work there. He has alltel.