T-Mobile Raises Text Rates

It really isn't big news that T-mobile has raised their a la cart texting rates to .20 each, however, when a carrier makes a substantial change like this, you normally can get out of your contract, free. While it depends on your specific terms of service, most wireless contracts are legally invalidated by a "substantial change" like this. You should have about 30 days to tell them you want out, or you are assumed to have accepted the new terms. While T-Mobile joins all the other carriers in raising texting fees, they also join the others as they are just now starting to pro-rate their Early Termination Fee.


Texting bundle prices will remain the same, so for those of us who use less texting, it may be worthwhile to consider adding Unlimited texting to our packages. It's almost sad to see what has been one of the more consumer-friendly carriers (they often win the JD Powers satisfaction surveys) do like the others, but a carrier has to eat, right?


Oddly, with this "get out of jail free" card, we don't know of of any T-Mobile customers who want to leave. There's no hope for a satisfied customer, is there?

The Town Without Cellular 2

Two and a half years years ago we discovered a town with no cellular coverage. At that time, we reported the small town of Victor, Colorado, an old gold mining town behind Pike's Peak, had no signal from any cellular carrier. This town was small enough to not have many residents, but it had a significant number of tourists...tens of thousands a year. Since then, only T-Mobile has grabbed the opportunity for exclusive service to the community, which also allows AT&T and other GSM roamers coverage.

This past weekend we visited the Nederland, Colorado Art Festival and found another town with the notoriety of no cellular service. The local predecessor to Verizon Wireless, Airtouch, had service there, but no more. AT&T's coverage viewer claims service there, but our AT&T phone was bar-less. This is a real town, almost 2,000 population, and is the first "suburb" in the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado. Alas, no coverage. There is some to the north from some carriers, and to the south with others, but not in town. This is also home of the popular "Frozen Dead Guy Days" Festival. Have they no respect for the dead? To add insult to injury, T-Mobile, who saved the town of Victor, claims coverage just west of Nederland at the Eldora Ski Area. However, there's no snow, and nobody home at Eldora.

We asked what happened, but locals claim the cellular carriers just aren't interested, and the carriers themselves claim they are 'looking into it.' It was frustrating carrying around several dead phones hoping one would come alive. The upside was that the little girls attending the local charity pop stand had time to give you their full attention, they weren't constantly watching their cell phone screens. I bet they get their homework done, too.

Alltel Keeps Getting Better

We have been holding back our commentary on the coming Alltel/Verizon merger, partly because it's hard to be objective...we really feel bad about losing Alltel. But Alltel keeps making their product that much more desirable, and that much harder to give up. Today they added Unlimited Texting to their already generous "My Circle" plans, the next best thing to a full Unlimited plan. This is on top of their utilization of "Rev. A" technology, which actually puts them ahead of their suitor, Verizon Wireless.

This encourages us to recommend Alltel even more, and with a 2-year commitment, you'll probably hold on to these advantages for the extent of that contract. There is always the possibility that the merger won't happen, or at least won't happen as quickly as Verizon hopes. It also leads us to wonder what would happen if the deal gets delayed enough that approval may need to pass through a new, Democrat-dominated federal government...either the presidency or Congress. That may have influenced the timing of the application. But these wonderful companies wouldn't play that kind of game....would they?

Do the Math on Your Wireless Plan

It's a good idea to review your cellular plan from time to time to make sure your usage fits the plans available. In our case, it's belt-tightening time, and I "did the math" on our most expensive plans. I felt we could be dollars ahead by switching to a prepaid plan where we would only pay for minutes used.

Fortunately, most wireless carriers offer some kind of analysis for your account, so it was fairly easy to figure out how many Anytime, Off-Peak and Mobile to Mobile minutes we use. The 'extra' charges that are added to post-paid accounts, like taxes and "administrative" fees make them more expensive than the "$39.99" you signed up for, whereas the prepaid plans charge a flat amount, normally based on so many cents per minute. Prepaid (with a different carrier) was looking good.

In wireless, just a few dollars more buys you a lot more minutes. So if we were to have a month where calling increased 25% or so, the post paid plan looked a lot better. But more importantly, we found that a "Family" plan would actually save us some money each month and we would still have some breathing room. Also, paying for text, data and email use by the Mb has turned out to be cheaper than subscribing to a specific email plan, at least for our usage level.

I also work with more than one salesperson who is too busy to increase their wireless plan to the next tier, and with all their overages, they would do better with one of the new Unlimited plans. But they won't take the take the time to "do the math." Can you? Most Customer Service agents will guide you, and in many cases, you might be pleasantly surprised. Oh, BTW, we're not going prepaid, yet. We did the math.

Driving & Talking

There is a movement to restrict the use of cellular handsets while driving. 6 states have banned the practice, and studies show teenagers are ignoring rules that restrict their use of wireless devices. Today, the federal government decided NOT to require car manufacturers to install an interlock that keeps built-in cellular phones from working while the car was in motion. While "distracted driving" is an increasing concern, most of us aren't willing to give up talking on our phone just because we're on the road.

Mountain Wireless wants to do our part and implant 3 very important thoughts into your head:
1) Never write, send or read Text Messages or email while driving.
2) Avoid using the phone in congested areas. Wait until traffic is moving more freely.
3) Get a 'hands free' headset for your phone. It's required in some places, and if you don't have one, we've made it cheap and easy to get one on our accessories page.

Don't be the driver who contributes to making Driving & Talking illegal, and also set a good example for younger users...they'll be talking even more than we did here in the "good 'ol days".

Sprint Adds Roaming Limitations

We don't know when it happened, but Sprint has added another gotcha to their roaming limitations. Formerly, Sprint customers who used more than half of of their monthly minutes roaming had the potential of having their service terminated. Now Sprint has set an 800-minute roaming maximum, on- or off-peak, that will also get you the boot. The terms: "Sprint may terminate service if (1) more than 800 minutes, (2) a majority of minutes or (3) a majority of data kilobytes in a given month are used while roaming."

Unfortunately, Sprint has some of the best roaming agreements among all carriers (for now) and some users have come to depend on this. Fortunately, Sprint is still expanding their own network so roaming is needed less and less. Also, we have not heard complaints that anyone has actually been kicked out as a result of excessive roaming, but it adds a cloud of uncertainty that Sprint's broadcast commercials try to specifically address. The new limit may have come as a result of their new "Unlimited" plans.

While Sprint/Nextel is losing customers at an alarming rate, the last thing they need is a reason, or even a hint, to terminate even more business. Raise foot...Aim...Fire!

Verizon Is Pushing More PRL's

Many savvy users have been able to pick & choose which PRL (Preferred Roaming list) gets loaded into their CDMA phone. The procedure was to check the latest List of PRL's and then either allow the PRL download (by pressing *228, or other means) or ignore it. Over a year ago Verizon Wireless began to force PRL updates, normally only to customers who made account changes.

Now some Verizon customers report even more of these updates are being forcibly downloaded to users with certain phone models without the customer's knowledge. This was an expected step and we are looking toward more such updates in the future. GSM users have normally had these updates (to the "MNC") "pushed" to their handsets so this isn't a unique event among wireless users. Knowing how beneficial PRL and MNC updates are to the carriers, we're surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

Sprint formerly "suggested" customers manually update their PRL and only in areas affected by any changes. We expect these capabilities to eventually be possible with all CDMA carriers. While this will limit how easily we can "choose" our PRL, it doesn't diminish our desire to know which carrier our phone will use while roaming. We expect lots of PRL changes over the next year, and change is good, right?

Verizon Wins, Vermont Loses

Back to Domestic Issues. It looks like the Department of Justice has responded to Vermont's objection to Verizon Wireless taking over the Unicel network in that state. We reported on this last December, and while we're sad to see Unicel disappear, we thought wireless service could indeed improve for Vermont residents with Verizon. It appears Vermont lawmakers mostly wanted to maintain the status quo, but there's no way the feds would refuse Unicel from selling their Vermont assets.

Instead, the DOJ has decided Verizon can buy the Unicel areas as long as they spin off everything in the state of Vermont, a couple of markets in Washington state, and one in New York. While this is good news for Verizon who won't need to further confront the Vermont politicos, it still leaves a void in New England that Verizon would love to fill.

However, the biggest losers may be Vermont wireless users. Of course it depends on who Verizon decides to sell the properties to, AT&T first comes to mind, but they could end up with service that is less desirable than Unicel's...they were good. Have you noticed that every time local politicians try to mess with wireless things rarely improve?

Where Roaming Charges are a Good Thing

After all the surprises and disappointments while roaming in Mexico, we have adjusted our Mountain Wireless Mexico Roaming Page to reflect our experiences and our now more conservative recommendations. Judging by how many Americans sitting near me at the pool in Mexico freely use their US phones, I believe the exorbitant roaming charges either aren’t that big a deal, or they don’t know what’s about to hit them when they get their bill. I know a few young users don’t care.

So if we tell you to just go ahead and use your US phone in Mexico, even at $1 a minute, it really is the most efficient way to go. And considering the barriers the Mexican carriers throw at us, it usually ends up as the cheapest.

I also saw a few smart users using a good amount of text messages which are very inexpensive, and there were a number of guests just using data. I feel fortunate most of my “business” is conducted by email, and free wi-fi, or at least reasonable internet access, makes talking so '20th Century.'

One Mexican cellular service I haven't mentioned is Iusacel, the number 3 carrier. They offer CDMA service and are offered in even fewer retailers than the others. However, at the airport, Iusacel has a huge sign that says, "Welcome Verizon" customers, implying we are able to use our Verizon phones just like we were home. I took that as a warning. That sign loomed larger than the roaming triangle on my phone...and that's HUGE!

You Can't Press 2 for English

Today, we are readjusting our calling habits, and our budget, to go back to using our stateside phones for calls both into and out of Mexico. Even though we thought it was handy to have English language prompts on our TelCel “Amigo” account, not everything is in English.

Every TelCel call is preceded by a “sales pitch” in Spanish which is annoying whether you know Spanish or not. And any informational message, like “you do not have enough minutes left in your account to make this call” are also only in Spanish. What’s really irritating is that in the US, every network prompt is available in Spanish, while in Mexico, only a few messages are available in English and only on TelCel. At least Movistar has not provided any English-speaking assistance, so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel we “deserve” any better treatment just because we are English-speaking tourists, but because the American carriers have been so accommodating to Spanish-speaking customers, it makes me feel like I should expect reciprocal treatment. However, I will feel different from now on when I hear, "para espanial, marque dos".

You Can't Get There From Here

Until now, our method of operating our wireless phones in Mexico involved either not answering our American phones, or leaving them off completely, then periodically calling our US voice mail to see if we need to return any calls. The hope was that our Mexico cellular accounts were able to make calls back to the US much cheaper than our Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile phones. Now that we’re not sure what will happen with our outgoing calls, our plans have changed, but as expected, even our best attempts at economizing with our original phones fall flat.

Wouldn’t be nice to look at caller ID and determine if the person calling justifies the $1 per minute expense? Good idea. The problem is none of our CDMA phones pass through caller ID. Ah, but we also have a handy GSM phone that does. So it shouldn’t be a problem for us, right? We can just call Verizon customer service (it’s a free call from here on a Verizon phone) and have them forward our calls to our T-Mobile phone. Good idea, right?

Not so fast! If we receive a call on our GSM phone, and see on Caller ID it’s crazy Uncle Larry, we can choose to not answer his call and save the roaming charges it would cost us to tell him we would prefer to call him back at a less expensive time, right? No, because when you allow calls to go to voice mail on a GSM system, you are still charged roaming air time, and that could add up if Larry leaves a wordy message. And our T-Mobile phone charges $1.49 a minute in Mexico, even for voice mail deposits. Yikes, change that call forwarding to the AT&T phone and pay only $1 a minute.

So far, we can’t find a way out of this quagmire of unreasonable charges.

Are We Having Fun Yet, in Mexico?

Until now, our method of operating our wireless phones in Mexico involved either not answering our American phones, or leaving them off completely, then periodically calling our US voice mail to see if we need to return any calls. The hope was that our Mexico cellular accounts were able to make calls back to the US much cheaper than our Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile phones. Now that we’re not sure what will happen with our outgoing calls, our plans have changed, but as expected, even our best attempts at economizing with our original phones fall flat.

Wouldn’t be nice to look at caller ID and determine if the person calling justifies the $1 per minute expense? Good idea. The problem is none of our CDMA phones pass through caller ID. Ah, but we also have a handy GSM phone that does. So it shouldn’t be a problem for us, right? We can just call Verizon customer service (it’s a free call from here on a Verizon phone) and have them forward our calls to our T-Mobile phone. Good idea, right?

Not so fast! If we receive a call on our GSM phone, and see on Caller ID it’s crazy Uncle Larry, we can choose to not answer his call and save the roaming charges it would cost us to tell him we would prefer to call him back at a less expensive time, right? No, because when you allow calls to go to voice mail on a GSM system, you are still charged roaming air time, and that could add up if Larry leaves a wordy message. And our T-Mobile phone charges $1.49 a minute in Mexico, even for voice mail deposits. Yikes, change that call forwarding to the AT&T phone and pay only $1 a minute.

So far, we can’t find a way out of this quagmire of unreasonable charges. Back to the beach...

A New Week in Mexico

As our wireless adventure in Mexico progresses, I am facing the awful truth that we will go back to paying .99 a minute for our calls both within and out of Mexico. But before I flush this Movistar SIM down the toilet, it’s time to experiment. Instead of worrying about plans or minutes or prompts or balance, I made a few calls. Keep in mind this is a bare-bones Movistar SIM, and I have not yet “wasted” any money on a refill. Lo and behold, it makes calls, including to the US!

So, unlike TelCel, Movistar’s SIM comes loaded with an unknown number of starter minutes, perfect for checking it out. This Movistar SIM is actually working out. And it was much cheaper. At $14US, it’s quite a few pesos less than TelCel’s $23US, so we’re not out much tequila money. So, I’m changing strategy. We’ll use this Movistar SIM until it quits working. My guess is it’ll give us about 50 Local minutes or about 10 minutes of calls to the US. The little girl at the store claimed it was already set up for Pay-Per-Call, but there’s no way of knowing until it quits working.

Over on our TelCel account, their customer service agent claims my account is grandfathered in on my original Pay-Per-Call plan, but the balance lady says otherwise. It’s another case of making a call and seeing what happens. I have never been disconnected in the middle of a call in Mexico, so I’m not sure what happens when you run out of minutes during a call…maybe nothing.

So the news is not all bad. We may still have a lots of calls we can make…or none. And other TelCel users tell us when they travel away from the “home” city of their TelCel account, all expected rates go out the window. Roaming charges, long distance fees and other surprise deductions magically cause the account to dry up like a tumbleweed.

Tomorrow, we plan to start answering our American phones again.

Mexico Series Part 3

While in Mexico, we’re becoming quite disenchanted by the wireless possibilities. Since TelCel has made their Pay-Per-Call service almost unattainable, we tried Movistar’s more consumer-friendly services. However, our first hurdle was Movistar’s inability to offer English-speaking prompts…at least we think that’s the case. We can’t through to ask.

However, Movistar has a whole web page dedicated to roaming on their network, written in good English, claiming that while roaming on their system, you can call their customer service, “*611”, and your calls are answered by English-speaking “executive agents” who will help you with any problems you might have. And they also have a handy toll-free “800” number you can call for the same helpful information.

So we slipped in our T-Mobile SIM to give Movistar’s “executive agents” a try at getting us English prompts and a Pay-per-Call plan. But when we call *611 nothing happens. If we call “611” we get T-Mobile’s customer service, or AT&T’s, depending on the phone. That’s great, but we want to talk to Movistar. Not to be thwarted, let’s pay the $2 charge on our hotel phone to use that handy-dandy Movistar “800” number. Guess what? No English and no “executive agents.”

We really tried to give Movistar our business, but we should have listened when, in our search for a Movistar “chip” (SIM), a shopkeeper at an electronics store asked “Why? Nobody uses Movistar here.” I guess that will include us. But our trip isn’t over, yet. More? yes...

Mexico Challenge #2

On our current trip to Mexico, we’re suffering through an early monsoon season and a series of wireless problems that have reversed our opinion of Mexico cellular service, 180 degrees.

After our disappointing experience with TelCel, we hoped Movistar would be far more consumer friendly…but our hopes were quickly dashed. As usual, finding Movistar phones, SIM’s and refills are much harder to find than TelCel’s. But if you read Movistar’s web site, the page concerning roaming in Mexico, written in English, they claim all kinds of favorable service for Americans roaming here, so the search should be worth it right? Wrong!

All we wanted was to have our menu prompts changed to English so we can add minutes, make calls and choose various features, like TelCel’s Amigo service. Unlike American carriers, there’s no “for English Press 2” at Movistar. Do they actually bother to have employees speak English? We’re beginning to think not. Tomorrow, we'll climb the Movistar stone wall.