Of course. I never said I could type. It was SBC. At the time, they were the only cell carrier available because the B franchise was held up by the claim of a local Indian tribe who said they had the rights to it. The FCC finally decided the Indians were bogus, and they had a lottery among the area ILECs which my own tiny telco won. They sold the license to Frontier and after the usual array of mergers and spinoffs, it's now part of VZW.
Yeah, it depends on what they mean by locality. T-Mobile has a tower in Ithaca, but that's the only one around here. Cingular has great coverage, and Cingular and T-Mobile have extensive roaming agreements. The question is whether they roam here.
I bought a T-Mobile prepaid SIM on ebay for $9.85. That should be plenty to find out whether it works.
R's,
John
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This goes back many years, but does anyone remember when, in the Chicago metro area, Illinois Bell (or Ameritech) was the so-called "B" carrier with 'Ameritech Wireless' and Celluar One was the "A" carrier? But then travel down the highway toward St. Louis and it flip-flopped; Ameritech became the "A" carrier and SBC (doing business as 'Southwestern Bell Mobility') was the "B" carrier? I think 'B' was always the established land- line phone company and 'A' was the maruders, or invaders into the established telco territory. It was that way all over the USA, with an A/B system; where established telco was 'B' and whoever got the franchise otherwise was the 'A' side. PAT]