whitetigergrowl

Quick follow up on this. It's obvious there will be pretty decent coverage in the Black Hills. Could there be some roaming? Sure, when you go into the Black Hills. But it should be much less if they put an antenna or something on Terry Peak. Which i suspect they will or are. But judging from what I and others are seeing they will either meet their year end goal or come close to meeting it. Which I must admit even up until a month ago I was pretty skeptical on too. Although I am still curious on Sprints strategy now for the Black Hills. Pretty sure they could just do some minor updating to the Nextel towers in Rapid and call most of it a day here. lol

Yeah I'd like to know this too.

Earlier this year there was a lot of talk of Sprint expanding their native network. Be it through partners or by themselves. Any word on the Dakotas? Mainly South Dakota and the Black Hills? So much going on between ​Tmobile and Sprint I can't keep up.

Sorry for the delayed response on this. Been busy. These were people with contract phones in most cases. I dealt with them directly because Sprint isn't here couldn't call them for help. I saw first hand in Spearfish just how wonky and unreliable they were on Verizons towers here. I almost got the impression they were using only some of the towers and not all of them. There was a Verizon tower across the road from where I worked and yet if they did pull signal it was weaker and likely from the tower across town. Because it was usually full bars where I worked. That being said, I know I have yet to see any indications they are in any sort of hurry to get here. What happens if for whatever reason they don't hit that build out deadline? T-Mobile when I talked to their corporate and network mgmt team still claim to be arriving here year before year end but likely not until after Rally. No clue how they will pull that off if they plan on building a ton of new towers. Sprint will likely be in the same boat. Great to see this stuff happening but I sometimes have been getting the feeling and impression that even if the movement does happen, it won't be quite as fast as they are saying. But I dunno. :\ I'll just be glad to eventually see them here though. We will feel like we aren't as far in the sticks anymore. lol

Odd. When I would deal with Sprint customers they usually either showed no service or complained they haven't had service or have had spotty service since around either Cheyenne or Sioux Falls. When I would check their settings roaming was on. So unless it was something with their plan? A lot of it was either tourists or oil traffic. Since I wasn't working for Sprint I couldn't call in. But I saw it many times first hand.

Sprint generally loses coverage as you head on I-90 from Sioux Falls towards Rapid City. I've lost count of how many Sprint customers complain about that. I could usually tell they were with Sprint too by the comments they made. lol. That they haven't had coverage in hundreds of miles. I would check their phone and it would allow for roaming so unless their plan didn't. Dunno what else to say. Sprint USED to have a roaming agreement with Verizon in SD. Verizon dropped them like a bad habit a few years back. Any service you do get with them here right now is sporadic at best. I would not rely on them for service in SD. Let alone in the Black Hills. It sometimes works....but many times also doesn't. All of the good ones do! I live in Spearfish. I agree it will be nice to not only have multiple postpaid...but prepaid options now as well. Finally we won't be feeling as remote as we do now. lol I contacted their corporate office directly. They and their network team officially confirmed they will be here by years end. How good is anyones guess. But I do fully believe it will at least be here by then in some capacity. They are showing aggressiveness in getting it here ASAP. So I do believe they will pull it off or be very close to doing so by year end.

Not sure about Sprint, but with T-Mobile having native coverage in the Black Hills (Belle Fourche, Spearfish, Sturgis, Rapid City, Deadwood, etc.) by year end I suspect TMobile may have a COW for Rally since they have the spectrum and such here now to do all of that. But it's hard to say at this time for sure. As for Sprint...who knows. I've seem a lot of crazy speculation online. I suspect they however will still have poor coverage, if any, during the Sturgis Rally this year. I would plan on using at least a prepaid that uses Verizon or ATTs towers. TMobile phones will work fine and just use ATTs towers. Voice and texting will be fine. But be aware of data roaming if they are not yet here by then. So you may have very limited data usage unless on WiFi. I live in the Black Hills.