I know a lot of people locally (and I used to be one of them) that are Unicel customers. They are now all Verizon customers (another story here and press release here).
I used them until my employer started paying for my cell phone, which meant moving to US Cellular. But they were one of the first companies to provide cellular service in this area, and I’m not surprised to see this happen as this area is growing quite fast and US Cellular has quite a few towers in the area. And according to Matt, T-Mobile is currently using Unicel towers, so I wonder how this will affect that relationship. Any local cell gurus who can answer that?
But this certainly now makes Verizon a good choice for rural customers while it wasn’t so before, as Unicel has good coverage in hard-to-reach areas of central Oregon.
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Maybe… the last info I saw stated that they are planning to migrate all Unicel accounts to their CDMA system (but will leave the GSM network up for roamers). It is going to take a while to build up that footprint from scratch. Also this means that it’s likely we will all be shopping for new handsets in the near future so that they are compatible with the CDMA network.
Sigh…
I didn’t realize that Unicel was GSM. That would explain why T-Mobile was bouncing off them (and probably still will). Thanks, Jen!
What a timely post. We’re moving to Bend at the end of the month and need to sort out what services we’ll need. Right now we have Cingular wireless phones, and that just won’t fly (I was roaming the entire time I was there looking at houses. All 48 hours, ha).
What wireless carrier would you recommend? What phone company? I know Qwest offers services that would work for us, but we’re not sure what other options we have. We need good high-speed broadband as I work from home when I’m not traveling.
Unicel customers are still Unicel customers. Seriously. I know this to be true. If anything changes, it won’t be for a good year. And, yes, Verizon and Unicel use different technologies. That’s the rub for sure. How wil the companies bridge that?
Hello MKK. Since this is somewhat off topic, I’ll pop you an email.
actually, Unicel uses both GSM and CDMA technology. They use CDMA primarilly in the midwest, specifically MN. It does use GSM in its Sioux Falls location, some Fargo, and parts of Duluth. They use GSM on the coast. Unicel’s primary roaming partner is VZW, so this will actually benefit the existing Unicel customer.
Hello,
I am a verizion costomer and i do not have cell service out at my work unicel does and i was hoping someone could tell me if it is official that verizion bought unicel i have heard that they did nad i have heard that at&t bought unicel and i don’t know which it true.