Questions

1. Sprint PCS affiliates and their area of operations?
2. Who are the Sprint PCS affiliates?
3. Nextel affiliates?
4. SunCom and Triton PCS?
5. Verizon Wireless carriers?
6. Cingular carriers?
7. U.S. MVNOs?
8. Sprint GSM service?

Answers

1. Sprint PCS affiliates?
   
   Below is a list of the carriers operating under the Sprint PCS brand and their operating areas (this is still under research). Table does not account for the recent acquisitions of various smaller affiliates by U.S. Unwired, Alamosa PCS or Sprint PCS proper at this time.
   
   

   Table 1-1: Sprint PCS affiliates

   Affiliate	Coverage area
   CFW Intelos	Western VA (from Louisa Co. westward)
   Shentel PCS	Warren & Frederick Counties
   AirGate PCS	Eastern North Carolina
   Gulf Coast Wireless	MS Gulf Coast
   Louisiana Unwired	AL Gulf Coast
   Texas Unwired	parts of TX
   Georgia PCS	outer suburbs of Atlanta
   Independent Wireless One	northern upstate NY
   Horizon PCS
   Northern PCS
   Alamosa PCS
   Ubiquitel PCS
   Brookings Telephone (Swiftel)	IA?

   
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2. Who are the Sprint PCS affiliates?
   
   AirGate PCS is an independent affiliate that operates in the south under the Sprint PCS brand. However, CFW Intelos and Shentel PCS are divisions of ILECs Clifton Forge-Waynesboro Telephone Co. and Shenandoah Telephone Co. respectively. Oddly, both CFW and Shentel previously operated smaller 800mhz cellular licenses which they both sold to Verizon Wireless. Unlike AirGate PCS and Shentel PCS, CFW is a third party Sprint PCS affiliate providing the infrastructure for Horizon PCS (who has no physical presence in Virginia). Additionally, CFW Intelos also directly competes against Sprint PCS in the areas where it also operates as the Sprint PCS affiliate. Talk about a sticky wicket!
   
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3. Nextel Affiliates?
   Yes! Nextel does make use of atleast two affiliates, Nextel Partners and ExtendAmerica. Only Nextel Partners operates in Virginia, and they provide the lions share of rural Nextel coverage from about Louisa County westward and probably well south into Tennessee. Northern coverage goes as far as Winchester.
   
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4. SunCom and Triton PCS?
   
   SunCom was originally a multicarrier affiliate network of AT&T Wireless, but in the late 90s a series of buyouts (TeleCorp bought Tritel and then AT&T Wireless bought TeleCorp) left Triton PCS the only remaining SunCom carrier standing. For some reason instead of droping the SunCom name Triton choose to stay with the brand. Triton PCS and Edge Wireless are the only two independent AT&T Wireless affiliates left (that I know of). With the pruchase of AT&T Wireless by Cingular Wireless it is likely SunCom and Edge will remain independent regional carriers and shift affiliation to Cingular. Below is a table of the original three SunCom affiliates:
   
   

   Table 4-1: SunCom Affliates and Operating Regions

   Affiliate	Region
   TeleCorp PCS	Northeast
   Triton PCS	Southeast
   Tritel PCS	South

   
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5. Verizon Wireless carriers?
   
   Below is a table of carriers and their previous brand names that have been gobbled up to become part of Verizon Wireless. I continue to use their post merger names because I really dislike the Verizon brand. It also helps on the coverage maps to see before and after network growth and investment. This table mostly applies to Virginia and some other purchases I know of:
   
   

   Table 5-1: Carriers Comprising Verizon Wireless

   Carrier	Previous brand
   CFW Wireless	Independent
   Shentel Mobile	Independent
   GTE Mobilnet	GTE Wireless
   AirTouch Cellular	AirTouch
   Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile	BAM
   Price Communications	CellularONE

   
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6. Cingular carriers?
   
   Like Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless is really the composite of a lot of smaller carriers purchased or merged over the last couple of years. Like Verizon, the combined companies operate under a moronic brand. However, Jax is a much better mascot than a check mark. The table below covers some of the bigger components of Cingular and their original networks. Cingular is rapidly overlaying their existing AMPS and TDMA networks with GSM equipment in a race to drop the TDMA albatross. Many have noted this has been a far smoother transition than AT&T Wireless's transition
   
   

   Table 6-1: Carriers Comprising Cingular Wireless

   Carrier	State/Region	Original Network
   Comcast Metrophone	PA (Philadelphia)	TDMA
   Comcast CellularONE	DE	TDMA
   Dobson CellularONE	eastern MD network	TDMA
   CellularONE	Washington, D.C./Baltimore, MD	TDMA
   AT&T Wireless	U.S.	TDMA
   Triton PCS	VA & northeastern NC	TDMA
   Tritel PCS	southern US	TDMA
   Pacific Bell Wireless*	CA	GSM
   Nevada Bell Wireless*	NV	GSM
   BellSouth Mobility	Southern U.S.	TDMA
   BellSouth Mobility DSC	North & South Carolina	GSM

   
   * Operations and infrastructure to be spun off to VoiceStream due to acquisition of AT&T Wireless.
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7. U.S. Multiple Virtual Network Operators (MVNO)?
   
   This seems to be popular overseas but is slowly catching on in the states. Currently there are only three MVNO setups. These MVNO arangements are summarized below in table 7-1. Please note that MVNOs may not have the same national footprint as the carrier they are reselling due to costs or carrier control over affiliates.
   
   TracFone is a divison of Latin American super carrier America Movil and offers three different services plans. OnStar is included for the sake of completeness since they now offer limited mobile phone service through the AMPS (and soon to be CDMA) phones built into OnStar enabled vehicals.
   
   

   Table 7-1: Current U.S. MVNOs

   MVNO	Resold network
   Virgin Mobile US	Sprint PCS
   AT&T Wireless (CDMA/new)	Sprint PCS
   Boost Mobile	Nextel Communications
   TracFone	TDMA: AT&T Wireless/SunCom, CDMA: Verizon Wireless, GSM: T-Mobile?
   OnStar	AMPS Verizon Wireless, CDMA: Verizon Wireless

   
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8. Sprint GSM Service?
   
   Yes! It is true, U.S. Sprint (formerly known as GTE Sprint, a joint venture between United Telephone and General Telephone & Electric (GTE)) has had a long history in commerical wireless service. In Virginia Sprint service came from Central Telephone Cellular (CENTEL Cellular). With the purchase of Central Telephone by United Telephone, CENTEL Cellular was rebranded as Sprint Cellular and Sprint Cellular was later spun off as 360° Communications which would later merge with Allied Telephone (Alltel) to form much of the modern Alltel. However, either before or after the spin off of 360° Sprint started another wireless venture in the Washington, D.C. area known as Sprint Spectrum which was operated by affiliate/subsidary? American Personal Communications (APC). This was a pure GSM service with an operator code of 310-02. However, Sprint felt the pull to start yet another wireless operation and dumped its GSM base station equipment on Omnipoint (later VoiceStream and now T-Mobile). To smooth this transition and try to dodge a class action lawsuit by former Spectrum customers Sprint colocated their new CDMA cell with existing GSM sites in an effort to keep the GSM network up and running. Eventually the GSM equipment (but I don't think spectrum) was eventually dumped on Omnipoint (later VoiceStream, now T-Mobile). This site sharing was accomplished via shared antenna or stacked antenna. VoiceStream is now slowly seperating their antenna from the shared sites but several examples still existing, most prominently off of Rt. 28 near Dulles Airport and off of I-495 before the stateline with Maryland.
   
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