Alltel offers unlimted mobile broadband (500kb/s+) for $25 a month

[Ryan McGinnis]

Anyone ever experienced this extra 5 cent a minute fee, how do you distinguish between roaming areas and non-roaming areas? Also they never mentioned anything about an activation fee, maybe it will just be one of those things that show up on the bill.

Roaming areas exist (there are only a few tiny places, and they're on the coverage map), but you shouldn't have much issues with roaming when using the internet. Right now, Alltel only partners with Verizon and Sprint for EVDO and 1X internet access. If you get on a tower that isn't Verizon or Sprint (which would be roaming), you're not going to get internet at all, so no risk in running up the charges.

You can buy like 100 roaming minutes for $10 a month if you're worried about it. I've had my Alltel phones all over the country from California to NYC, and the only time I was hit for an extra roaming charge was a fluke area in Missouri that showed up as being non-roaming on their coverage map. When I called Alltel and told them about it, they removed the (small) charge.

 

[Scott Olson]

Ryan is correct, you don't need to worry about roaming with this plan. I've had the 1X for two years and have never gotten a roaming charge. The towers you will get are covered under the plan and you will not be able to connect with towers they have no agreement with(that network isn't going to accept your login). The only time I experienced roaming charges was doing QNC outside of my home area.

BTW, those USB-PHONE cables are cheap off Ebay. I got my new one for $10 with the driver.

 

[Mark Sefried]

I think that I am going to jump on the Sprint bandwagon. However, I do have a few questions about the coverage. Do you have to buy a seperate plan for Sprints expanding EVDO network to use through a EVDO capable phone, or will the 1rxtt plan for $39.99 work? Will the phone connect at either 1rxtt or EVDO as long as I have a EVDO capable phone such as the Sanyo SCP-8400?

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Hi,
enquiring with you gurus here first...

Just trying to sort out mobile internet 'solutions' whilst chasing for 3 weeks from May-June. By the sounds of this thread it sounds as though Alltel is the way to go? Had a look on ebay, will the Kyocera KPC650 data card will do the trick for us?

...or...
Have access to a cheap Sierra Wireless 580 aircard sourced here through Telecom and use it on the Sprint network.

...or...
cingular?

And do these telcos let you pay up front? Do you have to be a US resident? How hard will it be for us?

Thanks

 

[Joe Dorn]

I will be going over there on Monday to ask some questions and move my wife's phone to my account... I will ask if you haven't found out by then...

I made it to the Temple (TX) Alltel store this afternoon... There is no problem with where you live other than you will have to visit an Alltel location for live interfaces... I expect the initial account and activation would also have to be at an Alltel store...

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I got it up and running today, so far here in Lincoln the speed is pretty fast. It's looking like I will be able to give it its real first test Wednesday, after looking at the coverage map of SC NE though I'm kind of glad were gonna have XM along.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

I made it to the Temple (TX) Alltel store this afternoon... There is no problem with where you live other than you will have to visit an Alltel location for live interfaces... I expect the initial account and activation would also have to be at an Alltel store...

Er, I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I've never heard of any US cellular company giving someone who didn't live in America a phone contract, which is what is required for cellular internet. The best you can hope for is pre-paid, which is quite expensive in comparison.

Unfortunately, America isn't like Europe where anyone can get a new cell provider as easily as getting a new SIM card. You have to sign up for at least a year for the plans we've been discussing in this thread, and I doubt they're going to do that for someone who isn't a resident of the United States.

Maybe Stuart Robinson is the best person to ask about this, since he lives in the UK and comes here often to chase.

 

[Tim Stoecklein]

I'm having a glitch with our Moto 815........after disconnecting the data connection I go to make a voice call, it seems the phone doesn't fully disconnect because when I go to dial a voice call it reads "packet call" as it would on a data connection. Anyone had this issue? To shut the phone off and turn it back on will solve it, but I wonder if I'm overlooking a setting somewhere.

 

[Tony Cook]

Joe's post was actually in response to mine from several days back, not Willoughby's. I had inquired because Alltel could not sell me a contract over the phone or online becuase I live in Austin. Alltel does not serve the Austin area, or several other bigger cities in Central/Southern TX. This is because of some 'agreement' carriers apparently maintain between each other. Joe was checking to see if I could get the plan by personally going into a store, even though my billing address will be Austin.

The answer was yes! My original plan to finally dump Verizon is back in play. Actually, I never had a problem with Verizon, fwiw. Excellent customer service, good coverage, and NEVER a surprise on my bill in 3+ years. They are offering a tether plan also, but it is $60/month. Yikes!

Alltel it is! Thanks, Joe.

TonyC

Er, I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I've never heard of any US cellular company giving someone who didn't live in America a phone contract, which is what is required for cellular internet. The best you can hope for is pre-paid, which is quite expensive in comparison.

Unfortunately, America isn't like Europe where anyone can get a new cell provider as easily as getting a new SIM card. You have to sign up for at least a year for the plans we've been discussing in this thread, and I doubt they're going to do that for someone who isn't a resident of the United States.

Maybe Stuart Robinson is the best person to ask about this, since he lives in the UK and comes here often to chase.

 

[CraigFisher]

I'm having a glitch with our Moto 815........after disconnecting the data connection I go to make a voice call, it seems the phone doesn't fully disconnect because when I go to dial a voice call it reads "packet call" as it would on a data connection. Anyone had this issue? To shut the phone off and turn it back on will solve it, but I wonder if I'm overlooking a setting somewhere.

My E815 does the same thing. After disconnection I have to maually hang up the phone, but cannot call out until I turn the phone off and on.

 

[Joe Dorn]

Joe's post was actually in response to mine from several days back, not Willoughby's. I had inquired because Alltel could not sell me a contract over the phone or online becuase I live in Austin. Alltel does not serve the Austin area, or several other bigger cities in Central/Southern TX. This is because of some 'agreement' carriers apparently maintain between each other. Joe was checking to see if I could get the plan by personally going into a store, even though my billing address will be Austin.

The answer was yes! My original plan to finally dump Verizon is back in play. Actually, I never had a problem with Verizon, fwiw. Excellent customer service, good coverage, and NEVER a surprise on my bill in 3+ years. They are offering a tether plan also, but it is $60/month. Yikes!

Alltel it is! Thanks, Joe.

TonyC

Sorry about the confusion, since I was looking at Tony's post as I responded, it made perfect sense to me...

I want to clarify one part of Tony's post...

Alltel does not have SALES coverage in the Austin area but they do have CELL coverage there... I will check out the Internet coverage Friday...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Maybe I shouldn't post this here but I don't want to start a new thread just for my problem. My connection has and still does work great at home. First chase I had laptop/msn messenger issues screwing me up. I formatted the thing and put everything back on. I was then surfing fine with my cell phone at home on the laptop. Well I forgot to install the gps driver and orinco gold card stuff, so I did that real quick before I went chasing yesterday. It installed boingo and I remember how much fun I had with that stupid thing and my wireless connecting. So I removed it, but it was still runing and gave me the warning to close it, but I ignored it and let it remove it anyway. Well all day yesterday my connection was a joke. It did this same thing over and over the entire day. I'd connect, I'd have about 90 seconds to get what I wanted before it would think I'm not connected. It would act slow as hell in getting a response, but then once it decided to load it was ok speed. Then by about 90 seconds or so anything I'd click on it wouldn't give me the time/wait symbol like it was loading, it'd just click and stop. Thing was my alltel connection thing still says I'm connected fine. So I'd have to disconnect it, then reconnect and repeat....all day long. Any ideas what/where on my laptop this issue is? Thanks for any ideas.

 

[Jarrod Cook]

Mike,

I know some cell connections time out rather quickly. This may not be the answer since you say it still shows you as being connected, but it's worth a shot. Try opening up a command prompt window and have it ping something continuously (like google or something else). This will keep your connection active and prevent it from timing out. You can do this by typing "ping www.google.com -t"

 

[Dick McGowan]

If anyone owns the Motorola razr V3m and has connectivity issues, you might want to call Alltel's data help line, and they will set you up with a driver that replaces a faulty one. I'd post the link, but it only lasts 3 days. I can't get Windows XP to recognize it, but if your connection just suddenly drops, it's because of a faulty driver with Motorola.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

My spidey sense tells me that there are probably multiple causes to this issue. I think it's tower related, as I have problems with some towers and no problems with others. However, the problems seem to coincide with transmission errors displayed in the DUN status window. One of the ways to resist this is to decrease the COM port buffer on the modem. You can do this by going into the device manager, finding the modem, clicking it, going to the "Advanced" tab, clicking "Advanced port settings", and then cranking the receive buffer down to zero. Seems to have helped a bit. Ultimately, though, I think this is an Alltel network issue, as I've seen reports of this problem all over the net from people with all kinds of phones. The freezing issue seems to crop up most when there are lots of active connections drawing data at once -- i.e., your browser sucking down 15 images at once while Itunes tries to pull down a couple podcasts. Part of me thinks that this could be a hardware issue; i.e., the phones can't handle packets going so many places at once, but mostly I think it's the Alltel network, perhaps by design. Maybe it's a way of discouraging P2P traffic by nuking connections with too many coexisting inbound connections. Whether by design or not, it really stinks and needs to be fixed or tweaked or something, as EVDO has gotten real annoying lately around here.