Since T Mobile is in Seattle, I would presume that if they 'were' seriously considering expansion into Montana it would have happened. It wouldn't take much effort to travel I-90 from Spokane and Coeur d'Alene and place a few towers in the Missoula area as a test market (I live in Helena). I sent them a few emails in the past and they did the thanks but no thanks shuffle. With more people in downtown Seattle and Bellevue on any given work day than in All of Montana, I am going to guess that we are stuck with VZ and can only hope that AT&T sees enough of a market to provide high speed /better services in the larger markets.
About a year ago I was talking with one of the OMG whiz kids of Verizon tech (yes, very heavy on the sarcasm scale :doh: ) and was informed of the amount of work needed to successfully update VZ's network and that it was more a possibility that the LTE system would be deployed as a major state overhaul (generally because of the large contracts with various state and federal agencies). So how much was truth and how much was this person trying to impress me with his crystal ball act I just don't know. However, with the limited knowledge I have of LTE, it does seem that as long as you are going to have to update a large geographic area, it makes economic sense to wait until you can offer something substantial. After all, they are a monopoly and they know it.
I could be very wrong (which is often the case), but many of the people on this forum have a substantially greater knowledge base than your average cell phone customer (I can put myself more in that "average" category than in one of technical skills). Those that are more technically 'adept' are ones that know what can happen given a decent state of the art network, while the rest of us are just happy when we can get a signal 10 miles out of town. Doesn't it makes sense (economically) to provide the least that they can and still not anger the majority? Not to be too depressing, but my guess is that AT&T is going to put in as little as they can get by with, for as long as they can get away with it. Not because they have no regard for the customers that they acquire (especially in the rural areas), but because they presume that the majority of those customers will accept, slower, less robust service as compared to a power user in a metropolitan city that has no qualms about changing to a different carrier.
Additionally, with all the pressure that is being applied to AT&T and Verizon to keep the roaming capabilities available, they are not going to be very excited about placing state of the art equipment in locations only to have that signal used by other carriers as part of an FCC agreement to provide that access.
Dang I'm long winded!! :allred: You'd never guess that I ran for political office about a dozen years ago.
Anyway, I'll be happy when I find out what AT&T is planning since I have been on Verizon on a month to month for 5 years waiting for something better to come along. Been with VZ since they took over the State contract (A long time ago) and I hate the idea of renewing that dang 2 year contract if something better is going to come.
