In article <[email protected]>, Aboutdakota wrote:

> Western Wireless, which started Voicestream, is in financial trouble.
> Most of Western's revenue comes from Cingular and AT&T customers.
> Western needed money, and DT came along and purchased Voicestream, the
> "ailing" division of Western. Now, Western is building a GSM 850 and a
> GSM 1900 overlay exclusively for roamers of Cingular, AT&T, and
> T-Mobile. Western Wireless currently runs AMPS 800, TDMA 800, CDMA 800,

IMO, Western Wireless's biggest mistake was going with CDMA for local
customers when they compete with VZW in so many markets. (Unfortunately,
given the fact they serve so many rural areas and GSM's range limitation,
they really didn't have a choice short of building many more cell sites,
which in some of WW's territory would be difficult to impossible.)

Of course, WW isn't the only carrier stuck with losing roaming revenue
because of poor technology choices -- look at Alaska DigiTel (who's
building a roamer-only network in Anchorage to serve more or less only
T-Mobile customers, as Dobson is going GSM 850 and will take care of
Cingular etc.), First Cellular of Southern IL, Commnet Wireless (who given
their roamer-only business model will *have* to run GSM in some markets
and CDMA in others to avoid losing their sole source of revenue -- in
their case, running GSM where AT&T or Viaero have coverage or CDMA where
ALLTEL or USCC have coverage makes no sense at all), etc.

-SC
--
Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/
....
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might
be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune


› See More: Western Wireless, was Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile