Customers with other providers may experience degraded coverage
MEGAN LEE Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 12:00 am
Some western Wyoming cell phone customers may notice an improvement in service - or a decline - depending on their cellular providers.
Union Wireless, a company serving about 48,000 of the more than 441,000 customers in the Cowboy State, turned off the last of its analog cell service on Monday, leaving customers from other service providers in the area without the use of analog for roaming capabilities.
Turning off the analog capability wasn't a malicious act, said Brian Woody, management team member and acting director of engineering for Union Wireless.
In February 2008, the Federal Communications Commission lifted a mandate that all cell companies provide analog service along with the digital service that all now provide.
"Most carriers at that point cut off analog service to anyone around them," Woody said. "We didn't."
But now, he said, Union is catching up to the rest of the country and converting all remaining analog to digital.
The changes will affect cellular customers in Teton, Lincoln, Uinta, Sublette, Sweetwater, Carbon and Fremont counties - "the most rural of the rural customers," Woody said.
"We're going to try to keep up as much for our customers as we can until we get our digital footprint," he said. "If they're where they only have analog, we'll try to keep it up so it will still work."
Although cell users with Alltel or Verizon Wireless could notice degraded coverage in a few of the less populated places around Wyoming, Union customers shouldn't notice a difference.
In fact, Woody said, digital service is notably better than analog. Analog, for example, only allows voice technology, so people with smart phones or phones using Windows mobile devices can't use the Internet with analog signals. Even text messaging or downloading ringtones requires digital service.
Altell and Verizon operate on CDMA digital technology, while Union uses GSM digital technology. Because the two technologies aren't compatible, customers from other providers won't be able to use Union Wireless towers now that the analog signals have been removed.
No one - even customers from other cellular providers who've lost roaming capabilities on Union towers- should experience significant service problems, Woody said, because larger service providers are already building more digital towers in rural places to compensate.
"If (customers) haven't noticed it yet, they're not going to notice a difference," he said.
Union plans to finish converting all of its old analog sites to digital by March 2009.
Contact reporter Megan Lee at (307) 266-0616 or megan.lee@trib.com