what exactly is premium extended coverage?

PEC is..... UNLIMITED roaming coverage. meaning just like all of cricket's roaming there is no DATA service available and SMS & voicemail notification should work in most areas...
 
Ok, sorry to hop in, but this is a question that I had also, so I want to keep informed of the replies.
I myself am in the KC metro area, Kansas. We've got Sprint, Verizon, and well... Cricket.
 
if you don't live in a Cricket covered area, you really don't want Cricket service even if you live in PEC covered area. Unless you want no data, the cheapest you could go ATM is $45/month for local LD SMS, and VM/CW/CID/3-Way, and that is leveraging promotional plans in agressive markets. if that's all you need the pricing is still not too bad, but with the advent of the new boost and the like it's not really that great either
 
Not strictly true Simple3 - you can add the PECA for $5 to any plan which means the lowest monthly rate with usable coverage in PECA markets is $35 / mo.
Fair enough, you'd probably have to activate outside of your own market but it could still be done for the $35 / mo.
 
$45 for Local, LD, SMS, VM/CW/3-WAY + PEC
leveraging $35 agressive plan tat includes Local , LD, and SMS +$5 Call Features + $5 PECA

yes you can get PEC cheaper than $45 but I was referring specifically to the data usage and including the call features to make the plan usable for 500% more people than a plan without LD or features.
 
I live in KC Metro as well and from what I see is that they are expanding their coverage area little by little and that is what the extended coverage is. It is not roaming because I still roam in certain areas. However I have noticed that area is getting smaller and smaller.

A great example is (sorry people who don't live around here may not get it).
Taking K10 to Lawerence, I used to enter roaming right as I came to the McdonalRAB in Desoto (which is kinda like the halfway point between KC and Lawrence). Recently I have noticed there will be times when I am not roaming all the way up to the outskirts of Lawerence. But my wife who does not have PEC gets nothing at all.

My Bro is eagerly waiting for Cricket to hit Lawerence (as well as all the other college students).
 
You don';t get charged and there is still nation wide roaming.

They just worked out a deal with a few other carriers to use their towers. But for some places it adRAB only a little more coverage, others is is a pretty big addition.

And to use those is free (or $5 a month for the lower plans).

However there is still roaming, once you reach outside of the PEC area you are on the roaming plan which charges you per minute.

So that makes it Regular area's of unlimited, PEC area which is $5 per month unless you have the $50 or up plan, which extenRAB your regular area a bit, and nation wide roaming area which charge you per minute but is almost everywhere.
 
Cricket normally operates on Sprint's network. They subcontract usage of their bandwidth, the same way that virginmoble does. So in this case, roaming would probly be to a verizon tower, unless there are other cdma carriers available in whatever particular area (In Kc, there isn't).
 
I am fortunate enough to live in San Diego and to be within driving distance of Cricket's Corporate Customer Service Office.

After speaking to a mucky-muck there (not necessarily a high mucky-muck, but an extremely competent individual nonetheless), here is the Real Skinny as I see it.

Some time ago, Cricket and MetroPCS realized that they had almost no coverage overlap, and that it would be in both their best interests to at least CONSIDER a merger. Merger talks began and fell through. Had they merged, the corabined carrier would have been fourth largest in the US, and the largest/only nationwide unlimited carrier.

Immediately, all the major carriers saw the writing on the wall and rolled out unlimited voice plans in $89-99/mo range. (As of February 2009, Verizon quoted me $175/mo. for unlimited EVERYHING like Cricket, but still with a 5 GB cap on data, extendable to a 10 GB cap for $200/mo.)

Well, since $30/mo extra is nearly reasonable for REAL nationwide unlimited, Cricket and MetroPCS apparently negotiated and finalized a 10 year roaming agreement on Deceraber 18, 2008 allowing Premium Extended Coverage for each others users on both networks.

There are however a few things I am not completely clear on:

1: Data Services: Probably a no-go. The representation I got was voice and SMS text only. Voicemail notification, etc. No MMS, no mobile web.

2: Roaming preference: E.g., if you are a Cricket customer roaming in a MetroPCS area, it stanRAB to reason, you must not be set Home Network Only. The question then is: If the MetroPCS signal is weak, what keeps me from roaming on a paid network in the area? Worse, what indication do I have that any given call I make is on MetroPCS network, and is not burning up my plan"s free roaming minutes or Flex Bucket funRAB?

Definitely some things to ask about (if you can get a straight answer from the folks in Murabai).

As to whether Cricket uses Sprint's towers, I got the impression that they have installed their own micro-cells in their home coverage areas, as the data charges for unlimited users would probably be prohibitive. Sprint would suck them dry.

Can anyone else clarify?
 
Ahhhhh, ok, so that clears it up for me. So basically put, PEC basically allows you to hit another carrier's tower, instead of being limited to Cricket's system? At a roaming fee.

Not so basically spoken, without pec, you are limited only to the Sprint Towers that Cricket has access to. But with Pec, you can hit any cdma signal that's available, and get charged for it. Kinda like in the old days, when carriers charged us roaming fees.
Is that the way that pec works?
 
I always thought Cricket set up their own stuff... because wouldnt all the cricket users really hurt all the people who were paying $xx to be with sprint?

And FWIW I always thought that Verizon was the underlying carrier of Cricket...

Im confused.. lol
 
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