Sprint, Coverage Getting Worse

Just a heads-up for anyone who uses Sprint in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, or South Dakota (South Dakota wasn't considered native but you're losing 3G roaming). You're about to lose your EVDO (3G) coverage, and use here will be considered roaming as of March 1st, 2011. This area never really had Sprint coverage, it had Alltel coverage. Sprint and Alltel had an excellent roaming agreement that included Sprint considering this area to be native service. AT&T bought Alltel in these markets, and by March 1st, will have begun transitioning customers to the newly-built AT&T network here.

This is a very surprising move, as Sprint pushed very hard for AT&T to be required to both maintain the CDMA network, as well as the roaming agreement, for three years. And they agreed to. So why is Sprint changing their policies here now, and not in 2013 (three years from transaction close)? Only Sprint really knows, but my guess is that without reciprocal roaming - that is, without Alltel customers roaming on Sprint - the costs skyrocket. Again, I have no idea and that is simply an educated guess.

I consider this a good thing. How is loss of coverage good? Because no coverage is being lost. Sprint customers are going to have a worse roaming experience, but people in this area could never become Sprint customers. Maybe Sprint will decide to build their network out here as a result of this? Who knows. They sure weren't going to under the prior arrangement.