Roaming on former Centennial: Here yesterday, gone today & tomorrow?

**whacker** · 04-24-2011, 10:24 PM

Interesting. This is on your HD2, I presume? I don't know the phone, but you won't be getting any AT&T 3G with a T-Mobile phone, due to the different 3G band assignments (at least until any completed merger, with a different phone). I wonder if I was a postpaid user whether mine would switchover automatically as well. It's either that or just the particular area I'm in, I suppose. Wasn't a factor with Centennial.

**tdw** · 04-25-2011, 08:05 PM

I totally forgot about the 3g bands being different, brain freeze, anyway it worked just fine without any work on my side manual selection was not necessary....and yes it was on an HTC HD2 T-Mobile version that is running Android.

**whacker** · 05-05-2011, 06:08 PM

I switched to a new SIM about a week ago, and I hadn't been paying attention to it, but today on my typical trip I happened to look down at my phone and it had auto-switched to AT&T! Did the same on the way back too. New SIM a contributing factor? Hmmmm.....

**tdw** · 05-07-2011, 12:27 PM

Hmmm.interesting...My sim is actually several years old, but who knows

**whacker** · 05-07-2011, 03:19 PM

Well, I changed mine out at the direction of T-Mobile CS, because I called in a tower that'd gone down. There's one literally a mile from my house that no longer puts out, but they don't believe me, and had me go through a bunch of nonsense in troubleshooting. It's been three weeks since I first noticed the lack of signal. Talk about slow to respond! There aren't that many T-Mobilers in this area, but there are people from important places like Chicago who may be driving by that might like to keep their conversations going. My SIM was coming up on six years old, and I had not seen much auto-switching going on since those first few times.

**tdw** · 07-24-2011, 08:20 PM

Whacker, I was in old NPI Wireless territory all day yesterday (N. Muskegon) my phone worked flawlessly, even with data roaming. Showed ATT on the carrier screen. T-Mobile (and 3g) came back somewhere near Holland. Hadn't been up there for a while, but I remember the old NPI Wireless showing on my phone a long time ago, i.e. 6 yrs ago I think.

**whacker** · 07-25-2011, 11:37 AM

Interesting to note, and thanks for the update.

I'm now getting regular automatically switched access to AT&T in the areas I previously described when I started this thread. Interesting it took as long as it did. I do not have what you'd call universal AT&T access however; just where Centennial had been providing it. There are many other areas I wish I could get on someone's network, but that doesn't appear to be part of the plan (yet).

**whacker** · 04-25-2012, 10:19 PM

New development, thread relevant:

Gotta admire the durability of a thread like this (

). Anyway, was driving home from a night class at a local junior college along one of the previously described routes (U.S. 31 "bypass"), and had not been actively checking out my phone's home screen report of active carrier for a few weeks. Normally this area was one where AT&T took over and let you roam on 2G with really good coverage and solid signal.

Well, I was surprised when I looked at the display and saw a whopper of a T-Mobile 3G signal! I didn't see when it might have first come up at the northernmost point in my travels (Napier Ave. for you locals), but passing by the Berrien Springs area was when it appeared to peak. It seemed to reveal the same level of signal strength and variation of same as the AT&T signal that used to appear, so I'm guessing there's a new T-Mobile antenna array co-located where the AT&T site is. Impressive to me for this area (small town and very rural).

Also interesting was when I approached a known high-elevation T-Mobile 2G site, that normally took over from the AT&T roamer. The changeover from the T-Mo 3G area I was leaving to the nearby T-Mo 2G site was not the smoothest or quickest (some bit of time lag in the transition). I wonder what it would've been like while on a call.

But it looks like T-Mo plugged that gap with their own equipment, and went 3G (or better - can't tell with just my Nuron) in the process. Now if they would upgrade the 2G areas to match! I'm sure they'll be up to something soon if they're serious about reassigning their 2G band for HSPA+ as we're reading about here on the forum.

Later y'all!

**Kies** · 04-25-2012, 10:29 PM

That's good news for sure. Usually, the handover from 3G to 2G depends on when you place the call and how far you are from the 3G cell. If you place it with a strong 3G signal and it fades out, usually your call hands off no problem. It gets dodgier as the 3G signal gets weaker.

**tdw** · 04-26-2012, 03:07 PM

I'll have to check this out when I'm up that way this summer towards Lake Michigan. When I worked at T-Mobile 10 yrs ago, the college kids were always asking if we had native coverage in Berrien Springs (we did not).

**whacker** · 04-26-2012, 06:51 PM

I have a hunch that servicing the several thousand (is it that many?) students at Andrews U. was part of the concern, as the cell site seems to be nestled in down closer to the town. But it does also cover a big stretch of the highway as well, from just north of Tabor Rd. exit all the way down almost to Walton Rd. The topography of the area allows that kind of coverage.

**4mula1** · 05-27-2012, 12:22 PM

Looks like the former Centennial roaming south of US30 might be gone. A couple of weeks ago I was in Mentone and noticed native T-Mo, not the usual AT&T. I was in North Manchester the next day and had native T-Mo 3G but this time I had Celltrack installed and the network number was indeed 310-26 but it was a LAC I had never seen. Had native T-Mo east on 114 to 5 and north on 5 to South Whitley. Native T-Mo continued on 14 east to Ft. Wayne.

Last night we were heading home from Kokomo and we had no roaming on US24 between Peru and Wabash like we normally do. No AT&T period. Picked up native T-Mo (full bars) in Silver Lake. Celltrack showed it as 310-26 in a LAC I'm familiar with. The cellid was unfamiliar.

Looks like T-Mo is getting forced to build some coverage here in the Hoosier state. Hopefully they will fill in the area north of US30 they didn't have roaming on before.

**Kies** · 05-27-2012, 12:45 PM

So where they had roaming there are now coverage gaps but they now have some native coverage where it was previously roaming? Is the new coverage EDGE/GSM or all 3G/HSPA?

**Julian** · 05-27-2012, 01:03 PM

T-mobile started overbuilding the roaming areas several years ago, but it seems like it has gotten to be much more aggressive in the past couple of months. Originally they figured it was cheaper than paying for roaming, nowadays I'd speculate that it probably is due to data (where there is either no or poor data roaming or it otherwise costs a fortune).

**4mula1** · 05-27-2012, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by Kies

So where they had roaming there are now coverage gaps but they now have some native coverage where it was previously roaming? Is the new coverage EDGE/GSM or all 3G/HSPA?

Mentone was Edge, North Manchester to South Whitley to Ft. Wayne was 3G all the way IIRC, and Silver Lake was Edge, but I don't remember if my phone was still in power saving mode or not at that point in the day. Power saving disables the 3G radio.