--> This issue has been resolved as of tests on 4/8/2001 and 4/15/2001, and it now seems that ATTWS CDPD customers in the ATTWS/Dobson Cellular market(s) of Poughkeepsie, Orange County, Kingston, and the Catskills region of New York can now use their CDPD devices in these areas. The message below is left for reference purposes. Note Albany is not ATTWS-owned (or part owned) so there is no CDPD there, and nothing on BAMS as of yet. However, Nextel customers and BAMS customers with digital CDMA phones can use the more limited dialup services of these two carriers in the Albany/Capital District market. ------ A few months ago, I posted about new CDPD service in the ex-American Cellular Poughkeepsie/A (00503) and Kingston (01515) markets. These markets cover an area in the Mid-Hudson Valley in NY from the northern border of the ATTWS NYC (00025) market to the Albany/A (00063) market. Recent developments, or lack thereof, in these two markets continue to indicate that even the larger carriers are still struggling with wireless data and not handling wireless data issues in a competent manner. They also offer yet another means whereby AT&T Wireless customers can get out of their annual or other contracts (assuming they have/use data service) as AT&T advertises service in these markets when it is or should be well aware that no AT&TWS customer can utilize their CDPD/data service there at all (see below). CDPD "Service" commenced in this area around September, 2000, but AT&T Wireless IP/wireless data customers as well as with other wireless IP customers from other carriers have never been able to roam in these two markets although they can readily register there. The Poughkeepsie and Kingston markets, although branded as AT&T to AT&T customers and some roamers, are in actuality not fully owned by AT&T, but have shared ownership between AT&T and a rural cellular operator called Dobson Cellular. Apparently, AT&T teamed up with Dobson two years ago to obtain the markets from American Cellular and AT&T had Dobson run their day to day operations. Although local customers in Poughkeepsie and Kingston generally buy phones in boxes labeled AT&T and see coverage maps for region-wide and nationwide coverage with the AT&T logo, they are not "true" AT&T WS customers and must deal with the relatively hick Dobson Cell which has limited customer service and silly policies (like a "Fraud Protection Fee" of $1 per month which they don't tell you about until right when you are ready to sign the annual service contract). After speaking at length with techs at AT&T WS in Washington state and elsewhere, we determined that the problem was "not AT&T's", but Dobson's -- apparently, although Dobson set up this extensive CDPD network in relatively rural counties, they never set things up properly with "their ISP" (AT&T's words) , and essentially have a CDPD network with no interconnection or "feed" to the Internet! Thus, you may register on the Poughkeepsie/Kingston network (I am told this is accomplished on dedicated links and does not use IP; I'm not sure how true this is but it makes sense based on the results we are seeing), but we can not pass any data through since the network there has had no internet connection since September and AFTER 7 MONTHS still does not! At any rate, this is what AT&TWS *says*...It may be true, but I have no way of knowing, since calls do Dobson Cellular (assuming they are not too busy tending to their stills and avoiding government liquor agents :) ) are met with a heavily southern accented "Cee Dee WHUT??" when I ask to speak with someone who can help out with CDPD wireless data issues. (And this is to their *Corporate* number, (800) 522-9404!) So Dobson is utterly clueless, and after a month and a half of calls to them I've gotten nowhere. I also find it extremely hard to believe that Dobson, which operates these two relatively small markets in terms of POPS and overall population, went out and on it's own decided to build a CDPD network and did it in such an incompetent way (according to AT&T's story) that the only reason we can't use it after 7 months is that "they haven't gotten their ISP connection set up yet". Although I can't say that the BAMS/Verizon market models are the same, if BAMS has decided not to CDPD-ize their Hudson Valley markets (and they own everything -- even the Catskill 01516 system now, it seems) up to Albany and beyond, ie, a much larger market area which could benefit from CDPD coverage, one would think that the economics of doing so are not so great that a hick RSA outfit like Dobson which has to sneakily charge "Fraud protection" fees isn't and can't afford to just go out and speculatively set up a CDPD network on it's own. It seems clear that the move to set up a CDPD network was promulgated by the AT&T involvement in these markets (if not outright ordered), and since the markets are jointly owned by AT&T and Dobson, it stands to reason that AT&T paid at least a portion of the bill to CDPD-ize these markets. Yet as it stands now, no one can use it, and AT&T and/or Dobson dumped a good deal of money into a network which is completely unusable and not generating a single penny of additional revenue nor enhancing the coverage area of current AT&TWS CDPD/Pocketnet/AT&T Wireless Data customers. And even assuming these services are "secretly" only being offered to customers with "Dobson IPs" (ie, Dobson may have some wireless data office which assigns IPs on its network and is currently not honoring roamers; this goes against everything which AT&TWS told me), there is no one there to talk to who has any idea what CDPD is, and thus it is doubtful that Dobson is selling the service locally. Yet AT&T proudly displays this geographically large area on it's CDPD coverage maps (with a disclaimer that it can't be responsible for coverage outside of it's markets), although it knows (or should know) that there is no way any AT&T Wireless customer could get data services in these markets -- the phone will register but no data at all will be passed out to and from the Internet. Regardless of AT&T's disclaimer, if it knows (and they have been made aware of this issue by our many, many calls to them and trouble tickets they have opened as a result of said calls) that their customers can not actually pass any data in these markets, and the reason behind indicating coverage in these areas is not as an intellectual exercise to simply indicate where a CDPD network exists but to entice customers to utilize it's CDPD product (as a standalone service or in combination with it's voice product), then effectively what AT&T is doing is misleading customers into obtaining service with an expectation that they will be able to use data services in these area when in fact there is currently no way for them to do so. As a result, more than a good argument could be made that if you are an AT&T customer who signed up for standalone (wireless IP), Pocketnet, or voice service (such as one of their regional/nationwide bucket plans which offer data services), and who needs to cancel service, that you could cancel your service with no penalty since you could claim that AT&T deceived you into obtaining service due to its depiction on its coverage maps of wireless data service in these markets, when in fact they knew that there was no way that you could use these services there, and thus entered into a contract with you which they knew they could (at least currently and when you entered into the contract with them) not honor. Perhaps if enough people call them on this and they loose enough of their Digital One Rate annual customers they may decide to give those hicks at Dobson a call and get their Internet networking issues resolved. (Additionally, AT&T claims there are no roaming charges in AT&T owned markets, yet its coverage maps indicate Poughkeepsie/Kingston as a roaming market. Now some AT&T wireless data plans do not have roaming charges at all, so this (currently) isn't too significant, but for customers who do have to pay outside of AT&T markets, if and when they do get service running there, will roaming be charged even though these are, to a great extent, owned by AT&T? No one seems to know, and worse, they have no interest or idea of how to find out...One would hope that AT&T had the presence of mind when they took over these systems in conjunction with Dobson to ensure that their roamers would be able to use the service at no per-kilobyte fee...although with the obviously incompetent manner in which this whole thing is being handled, who knows... :( ) I'll post more if there is any 'progress'..., -Doug