Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: My Trip to Kansas
Message-ID: <9507@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 8 Jul 90 23:38:10 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: TELECOM Digest
Lines: 31
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 469, Message 14 of 15


My trip earlier this week to the land of Ah's went off mostly without
a hitch, although my cellular phone from Radio Shack (CT-301) with
service from Ameritech gave me some hassles.

From Chicago going down I-55 we have Ameritech here at home and again
in the Springfield, IL area. Some other small cell carrier comes in
further downstate, which I belive is Contel Cellular, which is a
division of some other cell carrier.  Shortly before St. Louis.
Southestern Bell came in, then Missouri was served in a sketchy way by
United States Cellular over much of Route 54.

The trouble is, I could make no outgoing calls (or receive incoming
calls via Ameritech's 'follow me' roaming feature) on the way down. It
seems even tough I told Ameritech earlier in the week to turn on the
'Fast Track Follow Me Roaming' feature (which they did), since this
was my first trip out of town with the cell phone, for some reason
Ameritech got paranoid when they picked up my signal from central
Illinois instead of Chicago ... so ... they cut me off immediatly.

Being the Fourth of July, there was no one in their office to complain
to, but Thursday morning, July 5 I was on their 800 numbber at 9 AM
sharp to raise cain. I got a call back an hour or so later from a man
who apologized and said I had inadvertently been placed on the
'abandoned listing'. On the way back everything worked fine, except
that on a few occasions when between carrier areas, the roaming light
(as opposed to 'no service' light) would come on, leading me to
believe there was service at that point when there was not.


Patrick Townson