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Verizon shrinking coverage in Maine.


danlodish345

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16 minutes ago, Sprke said:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/09/14/verizon-montana-drop-affect-emergency-services/666350001/

Somebody is quoted in this article they used .07 GB the last 3 months. Also the rural carrier in this area is not signing up new customers so people have no other options. 

 

With verizons unlimited accounts, it is probably more profitable with less headaches to just steer people to verizon so you can sit back and enjoy that sweet sweet roaming revenue.  if you go on the facebook page of that maine provider in the OP you will see how they talked about downloading and streaming to your hearts galore.

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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/verizon-kicks-8500-rural-customers-off-network-for-using-roaming-data/

Unfortunately, Ars comments in general have declined in quality from their higher standards of a few years ago.  Too many people spout off about subject matter on which they are not knowledgeable.

AJ

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21 hours ago, WiWavelength said:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/verizon-kicks-8500-rural-customers-off-network-for-using-roaming-data/

Unfortunately, Ars comments in general have declined in quality from their higher standards of a few years ago.  Too many people spout off about subject matter on which they are not knowledgeable.

AJ

Ars has really gone down hill since Jon Stokes left. IMO

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Seems like this was a long time coming.  Not too surprising VZW is doing it.  VZW should have made more clear on their LTE coverage map when you are not on native coverage, but if you check 3G or Prepaid it is clear where they roam.  It isn't like these customers won't have an option.  They will still have their regional provider who already provided their service.

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16 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

They will still have their regional provider who already provided their service.

At least for the maine problem, the LTE roaming partner did not provide end user service to begin (which makes it even stranger verizon got into this deal with them) with so they can not be switched to but it doesnt matter, USCC is king up there.

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9 minutes ago, swintec said:

At least for the maine problem, the LTE roaming partner did not provide end user service to begin (which makes it even stranger verizon got into this deal with them)...

Not so strange.  VZW wanted the LTEiRA coverage for its own transient roamers passing through the area, not for permanent resident of the area.

AJ

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4 hours ago, WiWavelength said:

Not so strange.  VZW wanted the LTEiRA coverage for its own transient roamers passing through the area, not for permanent resident of the area.

AJ

And yet Verizon allowed these people to become customers. They showed the coverage. They allowed the customers to join.

Even though Verizon really is being asshats to rural customers and is giving rural Mainiacs the big middle finger here, I do respect that they have the right to do this. But I kind of like them getting the black eye publicly for this.  They created the issue and they are showing their true colors. They really have no interest in rural customers. They just want a cheap place for their urban customers to roam when travelling. And now rural customers can make their buying decisions accordingly. USCC is a better fit for them anyway.

But Verizon deserves to take this on the chin publicly. They could have stopped these customers from joining to begin with. They didn't. They were hoping they wouldn't use the network much. And now they want to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It's a one way street with Big Red. The house always wins.  In every single county. Every day. 

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14 hours ago, S4GRU said:

They could have stopped these customers from joining to begin with. They didn't.

Ive been reading some comments in various local facebook groups and what not and it seems the customers up in this county who signed up for verizon did get some pushback initially.  One woman, while at the verizon store signing up, was declined service based on her home zip code so the nice rep simply put in the zip code to maines largest city to establish service (and obviously establish his commission) and then once the account was up and running the woman then went and updated her address to her actual address in this roaming partners area.

there was only about 2,000 customers effected by this up this way so i do not think it would be far fetched to think many of these people were signed up under similar circumstances.  i put cell phone sales reps in the same group as car salesmen.

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5 hours ago, swintec said:

there was only about 2,000 customers effected by this up this way so i do not think it would be far fetched to think many of these people were signed up under similar circumstances.

And that may be why VZW is willing to throw under the bus this Maine LTEiRA partner.  While VZW may have promised the partner only roaming revenue from VZW's transient subs traveling in the area, the partner intentionally helped permanent residents of the area sign up for VZW service.

AJ

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On 9/12/2017 at 5:41 PM, WiWavelength said:

I side with VZW on this one.  Perma roaming on LTEiRA partners is not okay.  Those subs should be signed up directly with the LTEiRA partners that they are using nearly 100 percent of the time.

AJ

I think that LTEiRA partner in Washington County does not sell services directly. It just builds and operate the network for Verizon 

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1 minute ago, dnwk said:

I think that LTEiRA partner in Washington County does not sell services directly. It just builds and operate the network for Verizon 

That already has been noted.  Read the thread.

AJ

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On 9/14/2017 at 4:14 PM, Sprke said:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/09/14/verizon-montana-drop-affect-emergency-services/666350001/

Somebody is quoted in this article they used .07 GB the last 3 months. Also the rural carrier in this area is not signing up new customers so people have no other options. 

It was a little more nuanced than that. Their quote was the following

Quote

Like other small carriers around the US who are dealing with the same issue, we did not know this was coming. Because we have been losing cellular customers to this company's active marketing in our area for years, we did not have any excessive inventory of devices on hand or other resources needed to support a large influx of new cellular customers." 

They appear to be putting people on an interest list with the intent of accepting them as they have the resources to do so. It isn't as if they're going to need substantial network build outs to accommodate them, as they've effectively already been using the company's network. I can get a rural operator in Montana not having phones on hand or staffing levels to accommodate an influx of customers. What is a little more inexcusable on their part is the first sentence and a half. If as their statement does, you acknowledge you were fully aware that you were losing customers to Verizon who in turn were predominately roaming on your network, it should've been entirely foreseeable that this was coming at some point.

On 9/17/2017 at 4:10 PM, WiWavelength said:

Not so strange.  VZW wanted the LTEiRA coverage for its own transient roamers passing through the area, not for permanent resident of the area.

AJ

The Maine situation is still strange. If you are Verizon and you want a quasi-protection type network in rural Maine to cover your transient roamers/cut down on your roaming costs, why do you partner with this company instead of doing that yourself? In the reciprocal cases it is quite clear why Verizon was partnering with LTEiRA rural provider partners, in this case not so much.

The only thing that make sense is that if Wireless Partners, LLC was qualifying for some kind of assistance be it small business programs or rural economic funding that Verizon itself was incapable of meeting. 

Quote

Portland-based Wireless Partners LLC said it is planning to expand high-speed cellular and broadband service to underserved Down East areas.

The telecommunications firm on Thursday said the 4G LTE expansion is moving forward after it was recently approved as a Pine Tree Development Zone company by the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.

The Pine Tree Development Zone program was set up by the state to support job creation and new business development in selected state regions. It gives multi-year incentives for certified companies to encourage capital investment in new operations and create high-quality jobs.

Link

And if Verizon had these guys build the network there because they were cheaper due to their ability to get get assistance for providing service to under-served rural areas, that is a much murkier situation than the other LTEiRA deals.

 

 

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On 9/17/2017 at 7:43 PM, S4GRU said:

 They could have stopped these customers from joining to begin with. They didn't. They were hoping they wouldn't use the network much.

 

On 9/18/2017 at 10:39 AM, swintec said:

Ive been reading some comments in various local facebook groups and what not and it seems the customers up in this county who signed up for verizon did get some pushback initially.  One woman, while at the verizon store signing up, was declined service based on her home zip code so the nice rep simply put in the zip code to maines largest city to establish service (and obviously establish his commission) and then once the account was up and running the woman then went and updated her address to her actual address in this roaming partners area.

There is plenty of blame to go around on all sides here.

Verizon while it does appear they had a basic zip code block in their system could've been much more proactive about flagging accounts that were fraudulently setup by customers or employees at their own and third party stores and "moved" to the correct address. They also could've caught on a heck of a lot sooner that they had a high propensity of negative accounts that happened to correspond to LTEiRA areas.

LTEiRA It has been outright acknowledged by the Montana partner that they were losing customers to Verizon. All of these partners had to have realized they were getting more in Verizon roaming revenue than they realistically should've been from "transient" VZ customers. And any basic data audit would've shown them it was the same VZ customers using their data month after month. Instead of protecting their territory, as as been noted in this thread they turned a blind eye. They were getting roaming revenue without having to deal with any of the costs associated with having a customer.

Users I'm somewhat sympathetic but not really. I've seen multiple examples like swintec's above perusing LTEiRA facebook pages and local newspapers in impacted areas. At a fundamental level, even if we plead ignorance on the customers' behalves, people had to realize something wasn't right when you couldn't sign up using your own zipcode or in some cases it wasn't possible for you to get a local area code number. Beyond that there are numerous cases on the internet of people outright flaunting that they knew what they were doing. They wanted unlimited data, access to more phones than their rural provider sold, cheaper rate plans, etc. I have zero sympathy for them.

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22 hours ago, S4GRU said:

It will be interesting if Verizon answers the last two questions. And what its answer would be.

I'd be surprised if they did.

7. Should be an absolute yes, but my guess is no.  Which leads into 8.

8. It probably depends on the partner. If roaming is being charged on a per usage basis, pretty much the industry standard; then it depends on what Verizon is paying per MB to the partner, how much data a person is using, and what revenue the person is providing Verizon. I get the impression they're only really going after unprofitable accounts right now.

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, joshnys8913 said:

One of these days one of the big 4 will end up buying USCC remaining footprint, kind of like when Sprint took over in Chicago. I'm not saying it will happen but it could, seems like regional carriers are getting less and less. 

yeah it maybe sprint that buys it...it makes more logical sense to me.

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1 minute ago, danlodish345 said:

yeah it maybe sprint that buys it...it makes more logical sense to me.

IF the T-mobile/Sprint Merger fails (which I hope it does, but that's is just a personal opinion I am not really in favor of it), I would love to see Sprint buy the rest of USCC's remaining. I was super excited when Sprint got n telos (even though that was indirect from Shantel). 

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IF the T-mobile/Sprint Merger fails (which I hope it does, but that's is just a personal opinion I am not really in favor of it), I would love to see Sprint buy the rest of USCC's remaining. I was super excited when Sprint got n telos (even though that was indirect from Shantel). 

It will be interesting to see who acquires US cellular. But the executives at US cellular have to be willing to sell it.


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  • 2 weeks later...
My guess is the CCA will use their collective bargaining power to fight tooth and nail against any sale of U.S. Cellular. Isn't USCC their largest single member besides Sprint?
Sprint is larger Then US cellular

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