My cell phone is ancient by standards of the industry. It is a Motorola MicroTAC 650. I got it when they first came out. It has served me well for years. I've made calls on it from Chitina, Kodiak, at the north end of Port Wells in Prince William Sound, Costa Rica, Paris, London and 9,500 feet up Mt. Baker. I love this thing. Some people call it THE BRICK because it is so huge. You don't want to drop it on your foot unless you've got boots on.
It isn't digital, and Matanuska Telephone Association is converting to all-digital early in 2008. They've got an analog to digital free trade-in deal going on, but Judy and I feel it's time to shop around for a new plan. The one we have doesn't even exist anymore at MTA, so when we convert to digital, we have to sign on to a new plan. I've been calling around and searching the web, looking for something that fits for us.
In today's Anchorage Daily News, AT&T took out a Don Young-pissed-as-hell-sized ad (ie - full-page - on page G-4) for the iPhone, which is finally coming to Alaska. So I started checking some of the links at the ad and on the web. AT&T in Alaska - and elsewhere - is going through a lot of changes. In the Valley, what has been CellularOne will be AT&T sometime next year. The changeover was going to be December, then early January. Now nobody seems to know. If you go to the AT&T web page on the ADN ad, you're directed and redirected until - after you enter a Valley zip code - you end up against a wall: There are currently no online offers in your service area. Please visit the store finder to find the closet store.
So, if you click on that, entering a Valley zip code, and increase the search area to 50 miles, there's still no store. If you go to CellularOne's home page, you get redirected to the same AT&T dead end.
I called a national help number and the local CellularOne store at the Wasilla Wal Mart. Nobody seems to know when the change will happen, or if the iPhone AT&T spent over $8,000 to advertise today will even work out here after the changeover. Weird, huh?
AT&T can't sign me up for an iPhone here, and CellularOne can sign me up for a plan contract that will expire sometime in the very near future, but they can't say when, or what deals I might qualify for at a changeover time.
Robert Dillon interviews Conoco Phillips CEO Jim Bowles about that company's future Alaska plans at an Alaskan Abroad.
1 comment:
i remember having that phone 11 years ago and ironically enough people referred to it as the brick too, amazing to see how much phones have changed since then, even so that phone was tough and reliable probably the best phone motorola ever made
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