South Dakota Coverage Question

P

Paxton W

New member
Hello,
I am looking at jumping to the AT&T wireless network for the sole purpose of being able to get an iPhone. I live in northeastern South Dakota. According to the AT&T coverage map the city I live in is quite well covered with their wireless network (but not 3G network).

Will that make an iPhone unusable or cripple the functionality significantly?

Is it even possible for me to travel to a place that has an AT&T office and make the purchase of an iPhone there, then use it in my area?

I had also heard that AT&T was leading the race in purchasing Alltel networks in my area. Anyone have any additional info on that front as that would solve my problem right there?

Thanks for your time. Any insight anyone could give me on this would be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Actually, I just found a coverage map where it look like the coverage for my city is in Best coverage for both Voice and Data. I swear this wasn't the case 6 months ago. Makes me wonder if an Alltel deal is going through.

So I guess my main question is whether I can go somewhere else to purchase a phone and plan.
 
The iPhone works in 3G as well as 2G areas. You have to have AT&T service where you will live or use the phone to subscribe. There is no need to go outside of your local area to purchase an iPhone. If you area has service, you can order a phone online. From the AT&T Coverage Viewer most of South Dakota has roaming partner coverage. Put your Zip Code on the order page. If there is no service in that Zip Code, you will get an error if you try to choose either phones or voice plans.
 
I guess we are only in the EDGE (2G?) area...I wasn't looking at the map correclty. But it sounds like that should be fine so that is good.

I was just going through their online order and when I entered my zip code it did say there was no service in my area. When I view the map there is...strange. I filled in a Minneapolis zip code and proceded through. I wonder if they'd send a phone to and SD address or raise any stink about it. My contract with Verizon is up in a few weeks...I may have to give it a go.

Well, I just tried to go forward in the order process. SD isn't even in the billing address state listing. Wonder how I could pull this off.
 
AT&T probably has wireless sites along some of the major highways but not extensive enough to sell service in that area. I believe that you can put in the Zip Code where the phone will be principally used to order service. The delivery address and the service address do not have to be the same. The problem with using the phone in a roaming only area is that you could run up on the excessive off-net roaming limit either on data or voice or both.
 
Yeah, I've seen that information regarding the roaming areas. I am in Aberdeen, SD and when I look at that on the coverage viewer I see my city in the middle of 'Best' and 'Good' and 'Moderate' coverage (looks like maybe there is one town in the middle of town...?). This isn't partner (roaming) service is it? The same goes for the data.

I have heard of people using the iPhone in Sioux Falls, SD (without issue) which has a similar coverage area. Like I said before, this is different than it used to be. It used to be only 'Partner' coverage. So I don't know if they are gradually expanding (starting with larger cities) or what. But apparently it hasn't grown enough for AT&T to actually consider them coverage areas.
 
People in Sioux Falls and Rapid are good to go. The rest of us ( I live in Yankton) are completely out of luck.

I have not heard of AT&T expanding any time soon in our area.

If your looking for something like the IPhone I suggest the new Blackberry Storm. It is a nice phone with a lot of functionality simular to the IPhone.
 
As stated above, AT&T does not have sufficient facilities to offer native coverage except in small areas of the state. You will see that most of the state has the diagonally lines indicating partner coverage. Where you can use an AT&T phone can be quite different from where you can order service.
 
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